Tutorial: Using the Watson Explorer Engine Administration Tool

This tutorial provides an introduction to the Watson™ Explorer Engine administration tool. The Watson Explorer Engine administration tool is the tool you are currently using to view the documentation. This tool provides a graphical interface that enables you to configure the Watson Explorer Engine software without having to modify the XML files that the Watson Explorer Engine uses internally. Other features of the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool include viewing the documentation and viewing debugging information.

Important: If you are using the Watson Explorer Engine on a Microsoft Windows system and have also enabled the embedded web server that is provided with the Watson Explorer Engine, you should not attempt to use both Microsoft's IIS web server and the Watson Explorer Engine embedded web server to interact with the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool. These web servers typically execute as different users and groups, start processes using different user/group identities, and require different file permission and ownership settings on your Watson Explorer Engine installation. Use either one of these web servers exclusively when using the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool.

The Watson Explorer Engine embedded web server can be enabled manually. See Watson Explorer Engine Installation and Integration for additional information.

GUI Conventions

The Watson Explorer Engine administration tool makes it easy to create and configure search applications. Watson Explorer Engine provides many configuration options for each information source that you crawl or query.

Mandatory fields, values, and options that you must fill in or select are always indicated in two ways -- the name of the field is bold, and each is also marked by a small red asterisk. Each required field is identified in this way to make it easier for you to differentiate mandatory fields from optional ones that you may want to use to refine your search application, or for which you may only need to provide values in certain cases.

Tool Tips

Tool tip help for all of the fields, options, and variables that you can set in the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool is available via a tool tip icon () that is displayed to the right of each object. Clicking this icon displays a short help message in a pop-up. To close this pop-up, click the close box in its upper right-hand corner.

Informative Messages

The Watson Explorer Engine displays text-based status messages in response to actions such as starting services, crawling and indexing collections, and so on. The background color on which these messages are displayed provides information about the significance of the message and the status of your request:

  • blue background - indicates that the requested action has succeeded
  • yellow background - provides a warning or information about related actions that you must perform
  • red background - indicates that the requested action did not complete. For example, this can be the case if indexing or crawling did not finish or execute correctly, you did not supply a mandatory value, and so on.