mSQL ships with a web user interface for making amendments to XML configuration files. During installation you would have been asked what web server you wish to use for this UI - IIS, Cassini or none. If you chose the latter then this section does not really apply as the UI would not have been installed. If you did however choose to install the UI by selecting one of the other options, then you will be able to access it through the start menu – Start > Programs > mSQL > mSQL UI. If you are using IIS, you will need to make a change to a default value in the Web.config file (found in ‘C:\Program Files\mSQL\bin\UI’), namely the following –
<identity impersonate="false" userName="Domain\User" password="Password" />
The value for impersonate will need to be set to true and the values of userName and password will have to be changed to some valid credentials for the machine that the UI is hosted on – The UI will run under the context of this user. The reason for this is so that when an XML file is saved, the application has the permissions to write to the file (which, in the case of IIS, running under an anonymous user, it would not be able to do so). It is best to set up a user with the minimum privileges necessary to perform this action to preserve security.
In the authentication section of the Web.config file, you will notice the following node –
<user name="admin" password="21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3" />
These are the credentials (with the password stored as an MD5 hash) that you will need to enter when logging into the application. The default values for the username and password for a fresh install are ‘admin’ and ‘admin’ respectively. We recommend that you generate an MD5 hash for a stronger password and use this instead.
After browsing to the UI through the start menu you should see the following.
Simply enter the default username and password (admin/admin or otherwise if you have changed it) to log into the UI. After doing so, you will be presented with the following screen, where you can either choose to edit and existing configuration file or create a new one.
Note that the folder tree on the left shows the list of XML files that are in the ‘Config’ directory of the mSQL installation – The UI is set to point to this in the Web.config file in the appSettings section, as well as specifying what file to use as a base file for creating new configuration files and reverting to default settings (Template.xml by default, which is omitted from the edit list on the left – this file is read-only). You will also notice a ‘Log out’ link at the top right of the screen that you can use to get back to the ‘Log In’ screen. Once you select to edit or create a file, the screen will look as follows.
You are now in a position to edit/create the file you have selected. The navigation of the form follows the logical structure of the XML and should be easy to use. On the left-hand side you will see three buttons - ‘Save’, ‘Save and Exit’ and ‘Restart’ – which allow you to save changes and return to the config file selection page. At the top of most sections you will see the ‘Revert To Start’ and ‘Default Settings’ buttons which revert the changes you have made to the section you are on back to the settings you started with or to the default settings respectively. Note that the Data Sources section doesn’t have a ‘Default Settings’ button for each data source, as there are no real ‘Default Settings’ for a data source.
If you are unsure of any section you are looking at, you can use the ‘help’ prompts in each section to point you in the right direction. These are the small blue circles containing a white question mark located on the right. Clicking on them will expand the information on the section they are related to.