Installing and Configuring TIBCO WebFOCUS DSML Services

This topic describes the installation and configuration of TIBCO WebFOCUS® DSML Services.

TIBCO WebFOCUS DSML Services Products

The following WebFOCUS products are included in DSML Services:

• Instant Insights. You can easily run advanced analyses and generate visualizations and narratives on your data sets, without manually preparing and analyzing your data, or having prior knowledge of data science or statistics. With one click, the Instant Insights capabilities in Designer recognize trends in your data, generate customizable visualizations as charts with natural language headers, and categorize the charts into tabs. You can add these charts to the Designer canvas and build a page, or add them to existing pages or dashboards. Then, you can save and share your insights with others. For more information on Instant Insights, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User’s Guide.
• Machine Learning Functions. When creating a Data Flow, you can easily run predictive analytics on your data sets using Machine Learning functions, without prior knowledge of advanced statistics. Build, train, and run multiple iterations of predictive models in parallel, evaluate and compare models actively, and select which model you want to save. Then, you can re-run your model against new data sets. For more information on Machine Learning Functions, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User’s Guide.
• Metadata Classification. Examines your data and assigns classifications to the columns, which can then be used to match columns from separate data sources. You can classify data that you upload, and use it to match fields in a Union in a Data Flow. When uploading a data file, you can view the recommended metadata classification values for each character-valued column. You can choose to keep the recommended values, or to change them. Including classification values in your data improves the accuracy of mapping column tables correctly to each other. This is useful if you are integrating data from multiple sources, or if integrating data into a system with a predefined hierarchy. For more information on Metadata Classification, see the TIBCO WebFOCUS® User’s Guide and the TIBCO WebFOCUS® Reporting Server Administration manual.

TIBCO WebFOCUS DSML Installation Requirements

Important: 

• DSML Services can only be run on an Intel x86_64 Linux Ubuntu system, Release 20.04 or higher.
• The Unbuntu libraries must be installed. You can run the following command to install the libraries:

  sudo apt-get install libxrender1 libxtst6 libxi6

• The DSML Services installation is only available for the English language.

Hardware Requirements

The following are hardware requirements for DSML Services:

• Memory. Minimum of 16 GB physical memory (RAM) on the system, with most of it free for DSML usage.
• CPU. Minimum 4-core processor.
• Disk space. Minimum of 100GB free space on the disk where DSML will be installed.

Note: The installer detects the hardware requirements and does not allow the installation to continue if the requirements are below minimum requirements.

TIBCO WebFOCUS DSML Services Installation Components and Steps

1. From the TIBCO™ eDelivery site at https://edelivery.tibco.com/storefront/index.ep, select TIBCO WebFOCUS® DSML Services to download the installer for DSML Services.
    
2. If the LANG environmental variable is not already set to en_US.UTF-8, issue the following command:

   export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

3. Start the installer (TIB_dsml_8207.28.0_linux548_x64.bin).
    

   The installation lays down the following three binary components of DSML, under the install_root/tibco/dsml/bin/ directory:

   • instant-insights
   • metadata
   • ml-functions
      
4. DSML Services run under three HTTP listeners, included in the three binary components.
    

   You can customize the install_root/tibco/dsml/conf/run_dsml_services.sh shell script to change the three ports and worker counts, as necessary. These three HTTP listener end points are hidden to the end user and the TIBCO WebFOCUS® Reporting Server software.

5. You need to configure the NGINX Reverse Proxy to hide the three HTTP listeners and to expose only one HTTP listener. If you change the port numbers in the shell script, you need to make the corresponding changes to the port numbers in the install_root/tibco/dsml/conf/dsml.conf file. You can make any other necessary changes for configuring NGINX in the dsml.conf file, or accept the default values.
   • To install and configure NGINX on the system, you need the sudo or root privilege. If NGINX is not installed, then NGINX needs to be installed as sudo or root. Typically, NGINX is found under the /etc/ngnix directory.
      

     Provided there is Internet access on the system, and you have the sudo or root privilege, you can run the following command to install NGINX:

     sudo apt install nginx

     For more information on installing NGINX, see:

     https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/tutorials/install/

   • If you do not have the sudo or root privilege or Internet access, contact your IT department for assistance in installing NGINX. Once NGINX is available on the system, do the following as root or with the sudo privilege:
      
     1. If you already have processes running for the three components: instant-insights, metadata, and ml-functions, find them using the ps command, and kill them.
         
     2. If you want to customize ports, edit the nginx.conf file located in the nginx/conf directory.
         
     3. Issue the following command to remove the /etc/nginx/site-enabled/default file, if it exists:

        sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

     4. Issue the following command to copy the dsml.conf file to the /etc/nginx/site-enabled/default file:

        sudo cp -f install_root/tibco/dsml/conf/dsml.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

     5. Issue the following command to restart NGINX:

        sudo systemctl restart nginx

     6. Issue the following command to change to the full path of the conf directory:

        cd install_root/tibco/dsml/conf

     7. Issue the following command to run DSML Services:

        ./run_dsml_services.sh

TIBCO WebFOCUS DSML Services Directory Structure

The following table describes the DSML Services directories created by the installation.

These directories are created in the install_root directory, by default, where install_root can be any writable path for the user, with at least 100 GB of free disk space. The default directory is $HOME/tibco/dsml/. 

Note: If the $HOME directory was created as a Shared directory, it is recommended that you do not use the default directory for the installation.

Directory	Description
install_root/tibco/dsml/Uninstall/	Contains the Java included in DSML Services that is used by the installer.
install_root/tibco/dsml/bin/	Contains the three binary DSML Services components: instant-insights metadata ml-functions
install_root/tibco/dsml/conf/	Contains the DSML Services script files: dsml.xml run_dsml_services.sh
install_root/tibco/dsml/doc/	Contains the DSML Services readme file: readme.txt
install_root/tibco/dsml/jdk/	Contains the files used by the DSML Services uninstall program.
install_root/tibco/dsml/logs/	Contains the DSML Services log files.

Connecting to the TIBCO WebFOCUS DSML Microservice

Assuming NGINX is running under port 80, there should be one HTTP URL that will go into the WebFOCUS Reporting Server configuration for it to connect to the DSML microservice.

You can test whether your three DSML Services are accessible by issuing the following commands:

http://machine_name/machinelearning/v1/system

Sample response:

{"data":{"buildDate":"2021-06-26T05:06:17Z","gitCommit":"5217b6d1a94","version":"1.0.0"}}

http://machine_name/metadata/v1/system

Sample response:

{"data":{"buildDate":"2021-06-26T02:30:22Z","gitCommit":"1a9c98ef42a","version":"1.0.0"}}

http://machine_name/autoanalytics/v1/system

Sample response:

{"data":{"buildDate":"2021-07-12T18:42:09Z","gitCommit":"a30fe8cf455","version":"1.4.1"}}

Note: The py_serv URL is the URL for all services. Add the following pyserv_url command to the server configuration file (edaserv.cfg). The format is:

pyserv_url=http://machine_name

Note: The installation setup is finished and you should now be able to use DSML Services.