Installing Caplin Director

This page explains how to install Caplin Director. Usually, this will be done as part of a wider process. That said, we’re going to treat installing Director as if it were a stand-alone task, and won’t take anything for granted. However, you would typically use Director in conjunction with other components, such as a Permissioning Auth Module and an FX Suite application.

Prerequisites

Director is provided as a WAR file, which should not be modified.

Requirements:

  • Java 8 and a Servlet 2.5 compliant Java application server.

  • A SQL database compatible with the Hibernate API.

  • Internet Explorer 11 and above, Google Chrome, or Mozilla FireFox.

To ease log-file analysis across servers, time zones, and daylight savings transitions, we recommend that you set the system clocks of all hosts in a Caplin stack to UTC.

Installation steps

  1. Set up initial configuration

  2. Create the Director database

  3. Add permissioning data for your application

  4. Perform further configuration

  5. Deploy and verify

  6. Configure clients and users

1. Set up initial configuration

Follow the steps below to configure Director’s database connection:

  1. Define the Director configuration directory.

    You do this by either setting the Java system property com.caplin.director.configURL or the JNDI value com.caplin.director.configURL. Director will load the DataSource configuration file <configuration directory>/director.conf

  2. Configure Director by adding configuration items to director.conf

    Director should be configured as a Permissioning Adapter (an implementation of an Integration Adapter) that connects to a Liberator. Since Director is a DataSource application, it uses the same DataSource configuration as any other such application; for details see the DataSource configuration reference page.

    Additionally, the database catalog and schema can be configured using the following configuration items that are specific to Director. Just click on an item to get more detail about it:

  3. Configure the Java database connection (Java DataSource Objects).

    Set the JNDI value jdbc/director in your Java Application Server to connect to your SQL database.

2. Create the Director database

Follow the steps below to create the Director database:

  1. Create the database for Director (this must match the configured catalog and schema).

  2. Create the Director Tables using the DDL SQL file shipped with Director. The DDL SQL files have names of the form director-<database name>.sql

3. Add permissioning data for your application

Follow the steps below to insert permissioning data for your application:

  1. The base FX Professional permissions are shipped with Director in SQL files with names of the form FXMotif-<database name>.sql

4. Perform further configuration

Follow the steps below to set up custom fields, Caplin’s Permissioning Service, and KeyMaster single sign-on (SSO):

  1. Configure required custom user or client fields

    These go in the database.

  2. Set up the Liberator to accept permissions from Director

    Director connects to Liberator as a Permissioning Adapter. The Liberator needs to be configured for this. Normally this is done by implementing and deploying a Liberator Permissioning Service blade (a Config blade).

  3. Configure the single sign-on (SSO) system to secure the Director Web application

    Configure Director’s users using the security role name director-user.

5. Deploy and verify

Follow the steps below to deploy the Director web application:

  1. Deploy the Director .war in a Java application server.

    The application server must be Servlet 2.5 compliant and run Java 8 or later.

  2. Check that Director is connected to the Liberator

    Use the Caplin Management Console to do this.

6. Configure clients and users

Follow the steps below to add clients and users to Director:

  1. Navigate to the deployed Director URL using a browser.

    Suitable browsers are Internet Explorer 11 and above, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

  2. Add clients and users using the webapp.

    • The permissions configured in the database appear on the forms.

    • Users always have a subset of the clients permissions.

    • In order to log into the Liberator users must be configured in Director.