Connecting oXygen and eXist

What could be more natural than connecting oXygen and eXist? After all, they both share that second upper case X.

In fact, I'm trying to teach myself how to perform XQueries using the eXist-db, the "open source native XML database". This is somewhat tricky to start. Although it is relatively easy to download eXist, it does require ensuring that you have a JDK installed on your Windows machine. But then I ran into the real problem: there is no "hello world" example that tells you completely step-by-step how to write your first XQUERY, upload it to eXist and then execute it via the web interface. Or, at least, I couldn't find anything.

I have, however, figured out a partial workaround: I have figured out how to use oXygen as a sort of front end to eXist, to allow me to upload, edit and run my XQueries. (I still haven't figured out how to execute the XQueries directly from the webserver. Perhaps one day...).

I followed this screencast which shows how to configure your oXygen editor to connect to eXist. Although I had to use the jars listed in this howto, rather than the ones shown in the screencast! Just in case either that howto or that screencast disappears, here's what I did:

-1. Download a JDK (a JRE isn't sufficient)
0. Download eXist
1. In oXygen, switch to the Database Perspective
2. Configure an eXist datasource:
- 2a. Click on "New" under the top panel labeled "Data Sources"
- 2b. Select "eXist" from the "Type" dropdown
- 2c. Give it a name (such as "Exist Datasource")
- 2d. Click "Add"
- 2e. Select the following JARs from within the exist library:

• exist/exist.jar
• exist/lib/core/xmldb.jar
• exist/lib/core/xmlrpc-client-3.1.3.jar
• exist/lib/core/xmlrpc-common-3.1.3.jar
• exist/lib/core/ws-commons-util-1.0.2.jar

- 2f. Click "Open" then "OK"
3. Create an Exist Connection
- 3a. Click "New" under the bottom panel, labeled "Connections"
- 3b. In the Data Source dropdown, select the one you created in step two (which I suggested you call "Exist Datasource")
- 3c. Give your connection a name (such as "Exist Connection")
- 3d. In the XML DB URI field, edit the placeholder to be the host address of your Exist installation (and modify anything else that differs, such as the port number)
- 3e. Replace the username and password fields with the correct values
- 3f. Hit "OK"
4. You should now have an exist connection which you can open by double clicking!