Tuesday, August 11, 2009

How to install the Information Center help system plug-in into Rational development tools


Problem(Abstract)
Many IBM® products such as WebSphere© Application Server, WebSphere Portal Server, IBM Java Runtime Environment, make their Help available on the Internet as an Information Center. These information centers can be downloaded as help system plug-ins and installed within Rational® Application Developer. This article describes how it can be done.

Resolving the problem
Be aware that this technote only applies to the help system plug-ins provided via WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal Server Library.
Before you can install a help system plug-in, you must find the website where the plug-in is offered. These websites for WebSphere Application Server Library and WebSphere Portal Server Library can be found in the related URL section. For other plug-ins, you will need to search the IBM website for Information Center or Help system plug-ins.

For example, to download the WebSphere Application Server 6.1 help system plug-in:
  1. Go to the WebSphere Application Server Library website referenced in the related URL section of this technote
  2. Open the tab for WebSphere Application Server 6.1
  3. Choose the section called WebSphere Application Server - distributed platforms
  4. In this section you will find a link called IBM WebSphere Help System plug-in: WebSphere Application Server
  5. Download the .zip file called com.ibm.websphere.base.doc.zip

After you have downloaded the help system plug-in which you want to install:
  1. If the downloaded help system plug-in file is a .zip file and not an .jar file, you have to extract it. This applies to the provided example com.ibm.websphere.base.doc.zip Do not extract the .zip files contained in the .zip file.
  2. Copy the extracted files or the .jar file to directory >/plugins. Do not leave the help system plug-in .zip file in the plugins directory.
  3. Open a command line via Start menu > Run and enter cmd
  4. Change in the command line to the installation directory using the cd command
  5. Start Rational Application Developer and let it refresh the plug-in cache by usingeclipse -clean N.B.: The startup takes longer than usual, but it is necessary to wait until the product has started.
  6. Check that the new help content is displayed in the Help

You can now use the newly added help without accessing the Information Center and also view the content of the help system plug-ins using an external tool, as described in the Using this documentation off-line article in the related URL section.
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