CenterView Frequently Asked Questions

To get KPI notifications to work, do the following:

In CenterView Administrator, specify email configurations for the CenterView Server and for users.

1. In Servers, select the CenterView server you want, choose Configs > Edit.
   1. In CenterView Notifications > SMTP Server Address, specify the address of your SMTP server to which CenterView Server can send KPI notifications for monitored Score values.

      A valid mail host must be specified for KPI notifications to work.

   2. In CenterView Notifications > Notification From Address, specify the email address from where KPI notifications are sent.
2. In Users/Groups, add or edit a user, specifying the email address.

   The email address is required to send email or notifications on associated KPIs.

   Note: If using a custom authentication plugin, the authentication plugin should provide an email address for users.

In CenterView Builder, specify email or notify object properties.

1. In Object Browser, either select the kpi-defaults or select a specific KPI, then add the toolbar > options > email or notify objects.

   When displayed in a browser, the objects appear as notify or email buttons in the KPI dropdown menu.

2. In Object Browser, select the KPI, then add the score object, specifying the name and value you want.

In a dashboard, send an email or notification.

1. In a dashboard displayed in a browser, in a KPI, select either the notify or email button in the KPI dropdown menu.

   The buttons appear when a user is logged in and has an email address.

2. Complete the form for sending an email or notification.

   Refer to the dialog help for more information.

The Developer installation of CenterView installs a limited version of Tomcat allows for the development and testing of Dashboards. For production environments we highly recommend using another application server such as Apache's Tomcat (full install).

When you install the production version of Tomcat, select an installation directory structure that includes no spaces, as paths that contain spaces are not allowed by the JVM-supplied RMI registry that the CenterView Server needs to communicate with the Administrator (The default installation directory for Windows is C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Tomcat5.5, and we recommend using C:/tomcat5.5 instead in order to eliminate spaces in the path).

After you have installed Tomcat you need to install CenterView, you can use the Production install. Once CenterView is installed, copy the CenterView/Server/corda folder to the tomcat/webapps directory. Then start Tomcat and you will have the CenterView servlet running on Tomcat.

We do not recommend running the CenterView Administrator servlet on the production server for performance reasons. Instead we recommend either running the Administrator remotely or using the Admin installation option in the CenterView Installer which installs the ctadmin servlet in the "lite" tomcat.

To create a Database Alias in CenterView, you'll need the proper JDBC JAR file and two pieces of information. You'll need to know the driver class, as well as the URL to connect to the driver. We've documented some common combinations below. Note that we refer to a single JAR file, but some JDBCs require multiple files.

1. Get the JAR file. Determine the database type you'll be connecting to and locate a JDBC driver for it. Look on the database distributor's website for their JDBC JAR file(you might also do a web search for JDBC JAR files, because some are third party.
2. Install the JAR in CenterView/Server/corda/WEB-INF/lib. You'll need to stop and restart your application server so that it can re-read the classes in the Tomcat classpath.
3. Determine the URL and driver. Hopefully, the JDBC will have documentation regarding the JAR file and indicate the driver and URL. You'll use this information when setting up the alias.

A JDBC URL looks something like jdbc:databasetype://hostname/databasename.

The driver will look like a Java class, something like: com.company.dbtype.driver.

Here is some information for various JDBC drivers we've used with CenterView:

Oracle:
URL: jdbc:oracle:thin://serveraddress/dbname
Driver: oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
Jar file: oracle.jar

PostgreSQL:
URL: jdbc:postgresql://serveraddress/dbname
Driver: org.postgresql.Driver
Jar file: postgresql.jar

DB2:
URL: jdbc:db2://serveraddress/dbname
Driver: com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver
Jar files: db2jcc.jar and db2jcc_license_cu.jar

MySQL:
URL: jdbc:mysql://serveraddress/dbname
Driver: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
Jar file: mysql-connector-java-3.0.14-production-bin.jar

MS SQL (a):
URL: jdb c:microsoft:sqlserver://serveraddress:1433;database=[dbname].[dbo]
Driver:com.microsoft.jdbc.sqlserver.SQLServerDriver
Jar files: msbase.jar, mssqlserver.jar, msutil.jar

MS SQL (b):
URL: jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://serveraddress/dbname
Driver: net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
Jar file: jtds.jar

Sybase:
URL: jdbc:jtds:sybase://serveraddress/dbname
Driver: net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
Jar file: jtds-1.2.jar

When you attach an Excel file to a datafunnel CenterView makes a copy of the file and places it in the data_root hierarchy of CenterView. For example, if your dashboard was named MyDashBoard (and you installed to the default location), the Excel file would be copied to/Corda/CenterView/Server/data_root/MyDashBoard.

To update the CenterView datafunnel, you'll need to manually copy (or save) the file to the proper data_root location.