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Installing Your Application Program

When you create an installation for your Essbase API program, you may wish to include the API support files as part of the installation for your application. Alternately, you can install the Essbase Runtime Client on the target machine and accept all the environment update options. That process installs all the files needed by the API and sets the PATH variable.

If you decide to include the Essbase API environment setup as part of the installation of your product, you must construct your installation process to install the files required by the Essbase API. The exact steps required depend on your program and on the target operating system. The following steps illustrate a typical installation process:

  1. Prompt the user for the root installation drive and directory name, where root represents the name of the installation drive and directory; for example, C:\hyperion\essbase.
  2. Create the \root and\root\bin directories.
  3. Copy the product executable files to the \root\bin directory.
  4. Copy any other product files to the \root directory or any sub-directories.
  5. Prompt the user to choose a network protocol.
  6. Copy or rename the appropriate Essbase network driver library to the \root\bin directory.
  7. Copy the remaining library files to the \root\bin directory.
  8. Copy the message database to the \root\bin directory.
  9. In your operating system environment, define the ARBORPATH environment variable, and make it equivalent to \root\. This step is necessary only if you didn't explicitly set the client directory path in the ESX_INIT_T structure.
  10. In your operating system environment, define the ARBORMSGPATH environment variable, and make it equivalent to \root\bin \filename. This specifies the custom directory path and file name for the message database. This step is necessary only if you didn't explicitly set the message database path in the ESX_INIT_T structure or if the message database cannot be found by using the ARBORPATH environment variable.

Note: These instructions are appropriate for Windows client machines. Installing on other operating systems requires slightly different steps.

Installing API Programs on Different Platforms

If you install your program on different operating system platforms, be aware that each operating system has slightly different procedures for setting the environment variables, such as PATH, ARBORPATH, and ARBORMSGPATH.

On Windows, the environment variables are set in the environment section of the Windows System Properties. Access the system variables through the Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Environment tab. Adding the $ARBORPATH\Bin path declaration to the path variable on Windows is equivalent to editing the PATH statement in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file on earlier Windows machines.

On UNIX systems, environment variables are typically set using login scripts for individual users. The standard practice for setting these variables on UNIX is to provide a script with your installation that sets the appropriate variables and can be included in a user's login script by the system administrator. For more information on setting environment variables, see the Hyperion Essbase - System 9 Installation Guide.

For Add-in applications programs to work correctly you must specify C:\HYPERION\ESSBASE\BIN before specifying C:\HYPERION\ESSBASE\API\REDIST or C:\HYPERION\ESSBASE\API\LIB in theAUTOEXEC.BAT file or the Windows PATH environment variable. Otherwise, you will have to load them manually using the Tools | Add-In menu in the target application.