Updating Rational Publishing Engine files after data source server changes

If you make changes to the server that hosts your data source, you must update the Rational® Publishing Engine document specifications and, possibly, templates with the new information. These changes might include renaming a server or changing a port number, for example.

Before you begin

Design your documents and document specifications with the expectation that data sources change. You can avoid having to update individual files as outlined in this task by planning your designs appropriately.

Creating external variables is preferable to hardcoding data source URLs in your template. If you hardcode URLs and the server name changes, then you must update the URLs in every template. With external variables, you can override the URLs at run time. For templates that are embedded in other products, use the special variables that are recognized by those products when they are referencing data.

For more information on planning your template, see Template development process. For more information on variables, see Defining and assigning variables.

About this task

This task applies to REST and REST v2 data sources, including those that you connect to through the Rational Publishing Engine Data Services.

Updating document specifications

In the document specifications, you must reconfigure the data sources after you make changes to the data source servers.

Procedure

  1. Open the document specification in the Launcher.
  2. In the Document specification view, expand Templates > template_name > Data sources.
  3. Right-click the data source.
  4. Click Configure data source.
  5. Enter URL to the data source schema.
  6. Repeat for any other data sources in the Document specification view that must be updated.
  7. Save the changes.

Updating templates

In templates, if you assigned external variables to an element or hardcoded data references with a data source URL, you must update the data source paths in them. If possible, change variables or hardcoded references so they are not dependant on an artifact in a specific location.

Feedback