Running a Server

PDSC currently supports two methods for querying observations: local queries and remote queries to a server over HTTP. The pdsc package provides a command-line tool for running the server. It can be started as follows:

$ pdsc_server -d /path/to/index/files --port [port] --socket_host [0.0.0.0]

If no arguments are specified, the server will use the PDSC_DATABASE_DIR environment variable to determine the location of the index files. The defaul port is 7372 (“P-D-S-C” on a numeric keypad), and the default socket host is 0.0.0.0 (serve to all IP addresses).

The Environment Variables section describes how to set environment variables that will allow Python clients to automaticaly identify the location and port of the PDSC server.

Warning

The PDSC server is not yet designed to be robust against malicious queries. While some care has been taken to properly parse arguments to avoid SQL injection attacks, for example, a thorough review of potential security vulnerabilities has not yet been performed.