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Introduction

LexWiki is an open source, high-capacity editor for distributed terminology development. Developed by Mayo Clinic with collaboration by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the World Health Organization (WHO) and Stanford University, it is a synergistic effort for the development of a collaborative terminology authoring platform based on the integration of LexGrid and Semantic MediaWiki technologies. This version of LexWiki does not include Protégé components.

The features of LexWiki include:

  • Browsing support
    • Hierarchy view with Category Tree extension
    • Concept-oriented view with Header tabs extension
    • Proposal browsing - all proposals listed by curation status and by categories with ontology browser
  • My Proposals has a workflow extension
  • Authoring support
    • The LexWiki Protege Tab is used for loading contents into Wiki.
    • LexWiki Editor - semantic forms/Header Tabs: may propose change, new concept or concept removal
    • Change tracking and view changes
    • Proposal Commenting
    • Proposal Voting
    • Evidence attachment with citation and file upload

Scope

The LexWiki Installation Guide is intended for administrators. This guide will give you an overview of how to install and configure a LexWiki system. If you are not an administrator, we recommend that you work with the system administrator of your organization to install and configure LexWiki.

Prerequisites

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Tips

The installer utilizes Ant to perform its tasks.

  1. To find out information about various targets enter "ant usage" in the command prompt.
  2. To find out information about your MediaWiki install, enter "ant info" in the command prompt.
  3. To find information about the various extensions and their versions which will be installed, enter "ant info-ext" in the command prompt.

Instructions

1. The first step is to backup any existing MediaWiki installation. This installation process will not upgrade an existing MediaWiki folder.

2. Delete any existing MediaWiki install folder after backup.

3. Copy the mw-installer.zip to a temporary directory

4. Unzip mw-installer.zip to an appropriate folder.

5. Go to the location where the mw-installer.zip file has been unzipped. Edit the lexwiki.properties file to reflect values of your host, port etc.

6. If the user has database administrator privileges, set the wikidb.adminuser and wikidb.adminpassword in the lexwiki.properties file.

7. If the user does not have database administrator privileges, the following steps can be performed manually:

  • Create a new database for your wiki.
  • Set up a user who has all privileges on this database.
  • Enter all details in the lexwiki.properties file.
  • Make sure to set the has.root property to 'false' in lexwiki.properties.

8. The installer is capable of installing specified modules. Open the file module-metadata.txt. By default all the modules (and their versions) are mentioned here. To add or remove a module, simply edit the relevant line in the file. Make sure to follow the syntax exactly as shown in module-metadata.txt. The syntax in the file is sensitive to the following:

  • Every module descriptor starts on a new line.
  • There are no spaces in the module descriptor.
  • Every module descriptor ends with a semi-colon.
  • Any line that starts with a '#' will be treated as a comment and ignored.

9. On the command prompt, enter "ant install".

10. The installer will show a BUILD SUCCESSFUL message as displayed below:

11. The URL where MediaWiki is available will be displayed on the command prompt.

12. Log in to your MediaWiki as an administrator. Information regarding the username/password for MediaWiki will be displayed on the command prompt after a successful installation. The following screenshot shows a successful login to MediaWiki.

13. Click on the category tree '+' to see the list of categories. You should see the following
page.

14. Congratulations! The LexWiki installation is complete and ready to be used!

Troubleshooting

1. If the installer fails with a com.mysql.jdbc.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure message, it is due to the fact that jdbc driver was unable to connect. On a command prompt first try: telnet ${dbhost} ${dbport}. If you get an unable to connect message, then add an entry into the /etc/hosts file, mapping dbhost to 127.0.0.1.