Publishing documentation on a web server

One of the defining features of Dataedo is its HTML documentation export, which allows you to easily share your documentation with your whole organization.

You can host exported HTML on any web server available in your network or over the Internet.

This is a guide to publishing your exports on popular web servers.

Before you start

To publish Dataedo documentation on a web server, you need:

1. any web server with admin access (to publish HTML files)
2. access to Dataedo Portal with Edit permissions and Dataedo Agent set up (to export HTML files)

Step 1: Export

First, export your documentation to HTML in Portal:

1. Click Exports in the Manage section of the main navigation.
2. Click New export and choose the HTML format.
3. Choose the scope and content of the export, and click Export on the summary screen. Read more about the available options in Export to Excel and HTML in Portal.
4. When the status of your export in the Downloads section changes to Ready, click Download.
5. Unzip the downloaded file. It contains an index.html file and two folders — these are the files you will publish on the web server.

useful tip

If you plan to update the published documentation regularly, save your export configuration as a template in the Save as template step. Then you can run the same export again from the Saved templates section.

Step 2: Publish

If you do not have a web server in your environment, you can install Microsoft IIS server (requires Windows; you can find a step-by-step guide on Microsoft Ignite) or run an Apache web server in Docker (see the official Apache httpd Docker image for instructions on serving static content).

Dataedo HTML export creates a set of static web pages and does not require any special setup on most web servers.

Apache server

In most cases, it is enough to copy the exported files to the relevant folder.

In Apache on Linux, the default document root is:

/var/www/

In this guide, we use /var/www/dataedo/.

In Apache on Windows, it is usually:

*installdir*/htdocs/

Copy the contents of the unzipped export either to this path (if you do not want to host other pages) or to a subfolder (we are using a subfolder named dataedo).

The documentation will then be available at:

http://myserver/dataedo

To update the documentation, download a new export and overwrite the files with its contents.

IIS server

To host the documentation on IIS, you first need to create a site — you can find a step-by-step guide on Microsoft Technet.

After creating a site, note the Physical path setting — this is the path where you need to place the exported files.

You can find this setting later by right-clicking the site you have created, then choosing Manage Web Site and Advanced Settings.

The Physical Path setting is visible in the General group.

Copy the contents of the unzipped export either to this path (if you do not want to host other pages) or to a subfolder (we are using a subfolder named dataedo).

The documentation will then be available at:

http://myserver/dataedo

To update the documentation, download a new export and overwrite the files with its contents.