3. Installation

3.1. Directory structure

Directory

Description

Explorer

Top level application directory. Application configuration files and further source directories can be found here.

Explorer/explorer

Source directory with the core application

Explorer/explorer/config

User configuration directory for filters, projections and views.

Explorer/doc

Documentation

db

Explorer database definitions.

testdb

Test database for use in unit tests only.

pyenv

Cache for Python 2 virtual environment

Explorer/data

Cache for webserver

The BI Explorer is a python 2 application that was built to be run from a virtual environment. A virtual environment or virtualenv is a folder that contains all the necessary executables to use the packages that a python project would need.

3.2. Software installation

  • Ensure that the bootstrap requirements are met:

    • python >=2.6 <3 installed

    • python-virtualenv installed

    • postgresql-dev installed; required to compile python pgsql support in the next installation step.

    • supervisord installed

    • postgresql database either installed locally, or reachable via tcp.

Unpack source distribution, and prepare the virtual environment:

$ cd $EXPLORER_INSTALL
$ virtualenv --no-site-packages pyenv

Activate the virtual environment, and proceed to populate it with the python component libraries that explorer needs:

$ source pyenv/bin/activate
$ cd Explorer; python setup.py install

3.3. Database configuration

Explorer requires a PostgreSQL database with a user base table for authentication. A user-specific database schema is used for all explorer queries for that user, and also for storing user specific view configuration.

Example database configuration:

$ createdb dwh
$ psql -d dwh -c "CREATE EXTENSION tablefunc"
$ psql -d dwh -f db/user_table.sql
$ psql -d dwh -c "CREATE SCHEMA explore"
$ Explorer/useradmin.py -c Explorer/development.ini -a user explore password
$ <fill database dwh schema explore with explorer data>