ZEN Quickstart Guide

  1. Install the following modules before installing Zen:
    • The latest version of Java (version 1.4 or higher required).
    • The latest version of Ant (version 1.6 or higher required).
      • Put Ant's bin directory in your path.
    • The latest version of AspectJ (version 1.1 or higher required).
      • Change your CLASSPATH to include aspectjrt.jar and aspectjtools.jar
    • (Optional) The latest version of JUnit.
      • Change your CLASSPATH to include junit.jar.


  2. Download and Extract Zen
    • In Windows, it is recommended not to extract Zen to the Desktop. You're best off extracting it to the root of the drive (i.e. c:\ or d:\) in order to keep path names as short as possible, and without spaces.
    • On Unix-based systems, you can make a directory called "zen" in your home directory and extract it there.


  3. Copy the zen.properties file from the Zen root directory (i.e. c:\Zen) to your home directory
    • For example, in Win XP the home directory would be something of the form: C:\Documents and Settings\user.
    • In Unix, the home directory is simply "~".


  4. Build Zen
    • In the Zen root directory type "ant".


  5. Run a simple demo
    • Go to the packages\demo\hello directory off of the Zen root.
    • Type "ant".
    • Type "ant server".
    • Open up another shell to the same directory and type "ant client".
Congratulations!! You successfully installed Zen and ran your first demo!

If you had trouble with any of the steps above, please post a question to the Zen users group and we will respond promptly.

Other Features:

  1. Naming Service
    • 2 properties in the zen.properties file need to be modified.
    • The naming.ior_file.for_reading property must be a URL (http:// , file:// ) that points to the ior file of the naming service.
    • The naming.ior_file.for_writing property must be an absolute path to the naming service ior.
    • After setting these properties, change directory to the base zen install directory and type "ant ns" to start the naming service.
    • For your convinience, we have a naming service running on our server at http://doc.ece.uci.edu/~zenqa/naming_service_ior.txt. This server is restarted daily. (Please dont use this for any production purposes. We are not responsible for it going down or for any losses you may suffer due to this service.)