System requirements

  • The WebAPI must be installed on Windows Server. (Axiell supports all Windows Server versions that are still supported by Microsoft.) We recommend installing the latest version.

  • The latest version of the WebAPI requires .NET framework 4.8 or higher to be installed on the IIS server. (If the .NET Framework still has to be installed, then please take into account that the web server might need rebooting after this installation.)

  • Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) must have been installed and configured on this server. This makes it possible for workstations (client side) to access pages from the server. For the required Windows versions, these services are available: already installed, or included in the Windows installation package. On IIS, ASP.NET must operate in integrated mode (which is the default configuration). The application pool which we will create for the WebAPI server later on, must run in this mode. It is also a requirement that physical or virtual folders above the WebAPI folder do not run in earlier versions of the .NET Framework. Other web servers with scripting support (e.g. Apache and PHP) can also be used.

  • An Axiell Collections application (with a subfolder \data), although an application is not strictly necessary: in principle just the \data folder is sufficient. A requirement is that the application data directory is actually accessible. If the data directory resides locally on a server, this accessibility shouldn’t be a problem. However, should the data directory be located on a different server, then you have to check whether the access rights to the share and the ntfs rights to the relevant folder have been set up properly. For access to the relevant share, by default the account is used under which the application pool is running.

  • If Active Directory authentication will be used for access to the database, instead of SQL authentication, then the application pool must be configured to use an account which has access to the SQL Server.

  • For a Full text indexed database, at least SQL Server 2019 is required.

  • The package of files that make up the WebAPI. The standard WebAPI has been compiled in any-cpu mode, which allows it to act as a true 64-bit version on 64-bit systems and as a 32-bit version on 32-bit systems. 32-bit software can often be used normally on 64-bit systems, but if you use a 32-bit Oracle client on a 64-bit system, then the standard API will run into problems. For this case you will need a version of the API compiled in 32-bit mode. Note that we do not support Oracle any more.

Follow the global steps below to set up your Axiell Collections system for the retrieval of images via the WebAPI:

  1. The WebAPI is not a standard part of a local Axiell Collections system and won’t be installed automatically. See the WebAPI installation guide and the other documentation on the current website for more information about the installation. The WebAPI must also be configured so that it knows where to look for the images and how to retrieve them; see the The adlibweb.xml file documentation for instructions.
  2. In Axiell Designer, for the image field in which you link to images, set the Storage path, Retrieval path, and/or Thumbnail retrieval path with a call to wwwopac.ashx. (Only fill in the properties that you'd like to use.) See the Designer Help for an explanation of these options. See the WebAPI commands section on the current website for a description of the syntax for calling wwwopac.ashx
  3. By setting the path options above, you have specified a large part of the URL and the path to images in advance, so that in the image field in records only the name of the image for example, without path, has to be present. Therefore, you’ll have to check and adjust all your records with linked images for the correct values. Use search-and-replace to remove any part from a fixed path in all links.
    From then on, when you create links to images, you’ll have to adjust them (if necessary) so that only the file name (or the proper part of the path to the image in your situation) is filled in, not the entire path.