IDOL 24.1

# Basic IDOL Text Setups

There are several ways to set up a simple IDOL Text system, depending on the size of your installation, and the features that you want to use.

## Component Setup

The most flexible and versatile approach is to install the individual components that you need, and configure each component separately. OpenText recommends that you use this component-based approach in production environments. The component setup allows you to:

- use only the IDOL components that you need.
- configure each component separately, which can be useful for optimization and tuning, as well as troubleshooting.
- set the components up on separate hardware or with dedicated resources to enhance the performance for different operations, and to allow you to scale resources for different components in a more flexible way.
- simplify component management and maintenance. In particular, it is easier to start, stop, and reinitialize individual components.
- design highly scalable, fault tolerant IDOL systems.

The following diagram shows a simple component-based IDOL setup, with a Content index, View, Community, and Category, and a single Agentstore component supporting both Community and Category.

Each component has its own configuration file. For example, you configure the `content.exe` in the `content.cfg` file, you configure the `category.exe` in the `category.cfg` and so on.

Each component installation must also include any extra files or modules that you require. These additional files are included as part of the installation for the component if you use the IDOL Server installer. The zip package downloads also include the required files and modules.

NOTE: There are also other dependencies between components, which you must configure in the component configuration files. For example, the Community and Category configuration files must contain the host and port details for the Agentstore component.

Related Topics

- Distributed Setup

- Component ZIP Packages

## Unified IDOL Setup

For training and test environments, you can use a simple IDOL unified setup. This option uses an integrated IDOL Server, rather than separate components, to provide the core IDOL text indexing and processing functionality.

The unified IDOL Server includes the Content, Category, Community, Agentstore, and View components. It also includes IDOL Proxy, which acts as a single access point for all your actions and index actions. The unified IDOL does not include Query Manipulation Server (QMS), or Media Server. By default, it does not include distribution components, but you can add these to a unified configuration if required.

In a unified setup, you configure all the operations for the IDOL Server components using a single configuration file (except for Agentstore, which has a separate configuration file). You send all actions and index actions to a single host and port, and IDOL Server stores and processes the data and actions centrally.

The following diagram shows the basic unified IDOL installation.

In a unified IDOL, IDOL Proxy acts as a single point of contact for all your IDOL requests. It forwards all requests to the appropriate component. For example, it sends a `Query` action or indexing request to the Content component, and it sends a `UserRead` action to the Community component. IDOL Proxy also starts and stops the components in IDOL Server, and restarts components if they become inactive for any reason.

This setup is useful for training and testing, because it allows you to easily modify the configuration for the server, and you do not have to understand the whole IDOL architecture.

For most production environments, the unified IDOL setup is too small and restrictive. For example:

- it has limited scalability and no failover.

- it is difficult to add additional Content components to increase the size of the index.

- you cannot include QMS.

When you want to set up a full IDOL system, you usually move to a component-based setup, where you configure and optimize components separately, and often on different hardware.

Related Topics

- Unified Installation

## Stand-Alone IDOL Proxy

In general, OpenText does not recommend that you use the IDOL Proxy component with stand-alone IDOL components, because it introduces additional overhead in the system, without making configuration and maintenance any simpler in the way that a unified IDOL server does.

However, if required, you can use a stand-alone IDOL Proxy to forward requests to the appropriate component. In this case, IDOL Proxy can only forward actions; it cannot perform any of the component maintenance (such as starting and stopping components).

If you use a stand-alone IDOL Proxy, the IDOL Proxy configuration file must contain the host IP address and ACI port for each of the IDOL components that you want it to forward requests to. It dynamically configures other ports (such as the index port) when the components start up.

Copyright 2023 Open Text
Version 24.1 | Last updated December 2023

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Product: IDOL 24.1

Topic Title: Basic IDOL Text Setups