Database plugin installation

The Ozeki Database Plugin needs to be installed if you want to send and receive SMS messages through a database server. Oracle, MS SQL, MySql, Postgres, Sybase and every other database is supported that has an ADO or ODBC driver.

To configure database connectivity, the following steps are needed to be followed:

Step 1. Install the ADO or ODBC driver. (This installation might mean that you have to install and configure a database client).
Step 2. Configure Ozeki Message Server to use a user account
Step 3. Create the database tables.
Step 4. Install and configure the database plugin
Step 5. Start the database plugin.

Install the ADO or ODBC driver

Almost every database server has an ADO or ODBC driver, that can be installed onto the computer. Sometimes this ODBC driver comes as part of the database client package. Sometimes it is part of your windows installation. In other cases it can be downloaded from the Internet. As a first step to set up database connectivity you must install this driver and create a datasource that points to the database you wish to use for sending and receiving SMS messages.

You can read more about installing an ODBC connection on the following page: ODBC installation.

Configure Ozeki Message Server to use a user account

Often, ODBC drivers and database clients only allow you to set up database connections for the user account you have used, when you logged on to windows. (In most cases you log in as "administrator".) By default, the Ozeki Message Server installation creates a system service that runs in the background using the "system" user account. In order to be able to use the database connections available for the "administrator" you must configure the service to log in as "administrator".

Detailed instructions on how this can be configured are available on our Service account page.

Create the database tables

Before installing the database plugin into Ozeki Message Server, you must create two database tables in your database server. One of these database tables called ozekimessagout will be used for sending messages from the database and the other called ozekimessagin will be used for receiving incoming messages.

Example create table definitions are available on our SQL Scripts page for these tables.

Install and configure the database plugin

After the database tables are available in your database server, all that is left is the database plugin installation and configuration. The plugin can be installed using the Plugins menu in the Message Server Manager (Figure 1).

database plugin installation
Figure 1 - Database plugin installation

After installation you'll see the Database plugin appearing on the list of plugins in the "Currently installed plugins" screen. On this form you can start the configuration by cliciking on the Configure link (Figure 2).

database plugin configuration
Figure 2 - Database plugin configuration

The first step in the configuration procedure is the specification of the database connection string. This can be started by clicking on the Build database connection button in the Database Settings form. This will bring up the connection selection dialog (Figure 3).

database connection selecting dialog
Figure 3 - Database connection selection dialog

In this dialog you can configure the database connection. In most cases you will select the ODBC driver, then you will click on the Connection tab and will configure the ODBC datasource (Figure 4). After the configuration has been done, make sure you test the connection by clicking on the Test Connection button located in the lower right hand corner of the form.

database propertes
Figure 4 - database propertes

Once the database connection string has been built, make sure you place a checkmark in the checkboxes on the bottom of the Database Settings form (Figure 2) to control the behaviour of the database plugin. You can decide to send and/or receive SMS messages. If you want to send messages using a database table you also have to specify the time period the SMS server uses to check the outgoing database table. We call this time period Polling period.

If you would like the Database server of the plugin to start automatically when the Ozeki Message Server software starts, place a checkmark into the "Autoconnect on startup" checkbox and press Ok.

Start the database plugin

After the plugin has been installed, you need to start it. The startup process means that the plugin connects to the Database server and start to check for outgoing messages using the SQL statement defined in the SQL templates.

You can start the Ozeki Message Server Database plugin by clicking on "Connect" link in the "Currently installed plugins" screen (Figure 5)

connecting to the database
Figure 5 - Connecting to the database


The database connection results can be checked by opening the extended status bar. Click on the statusbar to open the extended statusbar and to see the log (Figure 6).

opening the statusbar
Figure 6 - Opening of Statusbar

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