Tip: DSpace on Windows XP: A Batch File for Compilation (or Recompilation) of the MediaFilterManager Full-text Index

For DSpace Users in Windows Platform:

If you haven't already known, here's a workaround I discovered today after spending 1-2 hours trying to enable the full-text indexing feature of the DSpace Digital Library software in Windows XP Professional SP2 on my laptop:

In Unix or Linux the "filter-media" shell script in [DSpace]/bin needs to be manually scheduled (cron) for daily update of the full-text database.

The Windows counterpart of the "filter-media" shell script is not provided in the DSpace distribution. With the environmental variable DSPACE_HOME set to C:\DSpace, a "filter-media.bat" batch file is written.

"filter-media.bat" can be manually run periodically or scheduled to be run automatically by Windows (to further investigate how to schedule a task).

Essentially, "filter-media.bat" is simply a batch file that executes the class MediaFilterManager in the package org.dspace.app.mediafilter -- by using the batch-file command:

call %DSPACE_HOME%/bin/dsrun.bat org.dspace.app.mediafilter.MediaFilterManager

The class MediaFilterManager takes care of the full-text indexing process.

"filter-media.bat" can be manually run periodically or scheduled to be run automatically by Windows.

Note that

Tomcat needs to be *stopped* before this script is run,

otherwise the CFS index file in %DSPACE_HOME%\search cannot be updated (by replacing with the new index file generated by "filter-media") and

"java.io.IOException: Cannot delete _[something].cfs"

will be thrown by org.dspace.app.mediafilter.MediaFilterManager when it cannot replace the CFS index file.


Keywords: windows-xp, windows, dspace, full-text, indexing, scheduling, maintenance