SIMPOL Documentation

In a production environment, you would ideally want the database server to start when the server starts, and to shut down gracefully when the server shuts down. Using Linux, this is quite easy depending on your distribution. It is fairly trivial to add /usr/bin/smprun /home/me/simpolserver.smp /home/me/simpolserverinfo.cfg to the start up of the server and /usr/bin/smprun /home/me/serverclose.smp 12345 to the shut down of the server (typically something like local.start and local.stop in /etc/conf.d/ or baselayout1.start and baselayout1.stop in /etc/local.d/). Linux makes a lot of things easier, which is why we only have one loader program for both console and windowing programs. On Windows, this is all much more complicated.

We created a special program that can run a specified program as a service, with a second program that can be run to stop the service. The program is called svcrunnr.exe. To install the service running program, from the command line run this: svcrunnr.exe -install. To remove the service, use this command line: svcrunnr.exe -remove. Before you start the service, it is useful to check that everything is correctly configured.

Once the service is installed, it is important to check its configuration file. The name of that file is: svcrunnr.exe.ini. This is a very simple file and it needs to be located in the same directory as the svcrunnr.exe program. It contains two sections, each with only one entry:

[Startup]
Command=C:\SIMPOL\bin\simpolserver.exe

[Shutdown]
Command=C:\SIMPOL\bin\serverclose.exe
        

Normally, there should be no reason to change this configuration file unless the locations are incorrect. It is specific to the installation of the simpolserver.exe suite of programs.

	Note
	Only one instance of this service can be running and/or installed concurrently, so there is no easy use that can be made of the service runner for other purposes. At some point we will release a more powerful service loader for SIMPOL.

After checking the configuration file and after making sure that the simpolserverinfo.cfg is correctly set up (because this method will always use this file name), if the server should run automatically, then it needs to be set to do so. Upons installation it is set up to run manually only. To change this, in a console window, or in the Start menu enter services.msc in the search window and press Enter. The services program will start. Navigate in the list to the SIMPOL Scripted start/stop entry as shown below:

The Services window showing the svcrunnr entry

Double-click on the entry in the list and in the pop up window change the startup type to Automatic so that it runs when the computer starts, then click on the Start button to start it running. See the image below:

The SIMPOL Scripted start/stop window showing the set up

That's it! The database engine will now run automatically when the server starts, and will automatically shutdown when the server is shutdown. To see what is happening and to control it, the simpolserverclient.exe program can be run.