Options

This page is linked from the Getting Started Section.

The options listed on this page can be requested with the GET command and changed with the SET command. Three data types exist: strings, numbers, and booleans, which can be turned ON and OFF. If options are internally changed by the GUI of BaseX, they will be listed in the Info View.

Main Options

The main options are only available from the Standalone Mode and Database Server instances of BaseX, i.e., they cannot be changed by database clients. They are stored in the .basex config file, which is opened by every new BaseX instance:

DBPATH

Signature	DBPATH [path]
Default	{home}/BaseXData or {home}/data
Summary	Points to the directory in which all databases are located. Note: this option can only be changed if no database is currently opened. If the option is changed, existing databases will not be moved to the new location.

REPOPATH

Signature	REPOPATH [path]
Default	{home}/BaseXRepo
Summary	Points to the Repository, in which all XQuery modules are located. Note: if the option is changed, BaseX needs to be restarted in order to activate existing packages and avoid side effects.

DEBUG

Signature	DEBUG
Default	false
Summary	Sends internal debug info to STDERR. This option can be turned on to get additional information for development and debugging purposes.

LANG

Signature	LANG [language]
Default	English
Summary	Specifies the interface language. Currently, seven languages are available: 'English', 'German', 'French', 'Dutch', 'Italian', 'Japanese', and 'Vietnamese'. BaseX needs to be restarted in order to activate the new language.

LANGKEY

Signature	LANGKEY
Default	false
Summary	Prefixes all texts with the internal language keys. This option is helpful if BaseX is translated into another language, and if you want to see where particular texts are displayed. BaseX needs to be restarted in order to activate this option.

Client/Server Architecture

HOST

Signature	HOST [host]
Default	localhost
Summary	This host name is used by the client when connecting to a server.

PORT

Signature	PORT [port]
Default	1984
Summary	This port is used by the client when connecting to a server.

SERVERPORT

Signature	SERVERPORT [port]
Default	1984
Summary	This is the port the database server will be listening to.

SERVERHOST

Signature	SERVERHOST [host|ip]
Default	empty (wildcard)
Summary	This is the host name or ip address the server is bound to. The server will be open to all clients if the option is set to an empty string.

EVENTPORT

Signature	EVENTPORT [port]
Default	1985
Summary	This port is used by the client to listen for server events. This port will only be bound if a client attaches itself to a database event.

HTTPPORT

Signature	HTTPPORT [port]
Default	8984
Summary	This is the port the HTTP Server will be listening to.

STOPPORT

Signature	STOPPORT [port]
Default	8985
Summary	This is the port on which the HTTP Server can be locally closed.

HTTPPATH

Signature	HTTPPATH [path]
Default	{home}/BaseXHTTP
Summary	Points to the HTTP root directory, in which HTML files may be stored, and query files that will be evaluated by the REST service.

PROXYHOST

Signature	PROXYHOST [host]
Default
Summary	This is the host name of a proxy server.

PROXYPORT

Signature	PROXYPORT [port]
Default	80
Summary	This is the port number of a proxy server.

NONPROXYHOSTS

Signature	NONPROXYHOSTS [hosts]
Default
Summary	This is a list of hosts that should be directly accessed.

PARALLEL

Signature	PARALLEL [number]
Default	8
Summary	Denotes the maximum allowed number of parallel read transactions.

TIMEOUT

Signature	TIMEOUT [seconds]
Default	0 (no timeout)
Summary	Specifies the maximum time a read-only transaction may take. If an operation takes longer than the specified timeout, it will be aborted. Write operations will not be affected by this timeout, as this would corrupt the integrity of the database. The timeout is deactivated if the timeout is set to 0. Since Version 7.2, it is ignored for ADMIN operations.

AUTHTIMEOUT

Signature	AUTHTIMEOUT [seconds]
Default	10
Summary	Specifies the maximum time reserved for creating a new session. If authentication takes longer than the specified timeout, the connection will be closed. The timeout is deactivated if the timeout is set to 0.

KEEPALIVE

Signature	KEEPALIVE [seconds]
Default	0 (no timeout)
Summary	Specifies the maximum time a client will be remembered by the server. If there has been no interaction with a client for a longer time than specified by this timeout, it will be disconnected. Running operations will not be affected by this option. The keepalive check is deactivated if the value is set to 0.

Create Options

CHOP

Signature	CHOP
Default	true
Summary	Chops all leading and trailing whitespaces from text nodes while building a database, and discards empty text nodes. This option often reduces the database size by up to 50%.

INTPARSE

Signature	INTPARSE
Default	true
Summary	Uses the internal XML parser instead of the standard Java XML parser. The internal parser is faster, more fault tolerant and supports common HTML entities out-of-the-box, but it does not support all features needed for parsing DTDs.

DTD

Signature	DTD
Default	false
Summary	Parses referenced DTDs and resolves XML entities. By default, this option is switched to false, as many DTDs are located externally, which may completely block the process of creating new databases. The CATFILE option can be changed to locally resolve DTDs.

CATFILE

Signature	CATFILE [path]
Default	empty
Summary	Specifies a catalog file to locally resolve DTDs; see the entry on Catalog Resolvers for more details.

CREATEFILTER

Signature	CREATEFILTER [filter]
Default	*.xml
Summary	File filter in the Glob Syntax, which is applied whenever new databases are created, or resources are added to a database.

ADDARCHIVES

Signature	ADDARCHIVES
Default	true
Summary	If this option is set to true, files within archives (ZIP, GZIP, DOCX, etc.) are parsed whenever new database are created or resources are added to a database.

SKIPCORRUPT

Signature	SKIPCORRUPT
Default	false
Summary	Skips corrupt (i.e., not well-formed) files while creating a database or adding new documents. If this option is activated, document updates are slowed down, as all files will be parsed twice. Next, main memory consumption will be higher as parsed files will be cached in main memory.

ADDRAW

Signature	ADDRAW
Default	false
Summary	If this option is activated, and if new resources are added to a database, all files that are not filtered by the CREATEFILTER option will be added as raw files (i.e., in their binary representation).

PARSER

Signature	PARSER [type]
Default	XML
Summary	Defines a parser for importing new files to the database. Currently, 'XML', 'JSON', 'CSV', 'TEXT', 'HTML' are available as parsers. HTML will be parsed as normal XML files if Tagsoup is not found in the classpath.

PARSEROPT

Signature	PARSEROPT [options]
Default	empty
Summary	Defines parser-specific options; see Parsers for more information.

HTMLOPT

Signature	HTMLOPT [options]
Default	empty
Summary	Allows to specify TagSoup options for HTML parsing; see HTML Parser for more information.

Database Options

MAINMEM

Signature	MAINMEM
Default	false
Summary	If this option is turned on, new databases will be exclusively created in main memory. Most queries will be evaluated faster in main memory mode, but all data is lost if BaseX is shut down. The value of this option will be assigned once to a new database, and cannot be changed after that.

PATHINDEX

Signature	PATHINDEX
Default	true
Summary	Creates a path index whenever a new database is created. A path index helps to optimize location paths; see Indexes for more details.

TEXTINDEX

Signature	TEXTINDEX
Default	true
Summary	Creates a text index whenever a new database is created. A text index speeds up queries with equality comparisons on text nodes; see Indexes for more details.

ATTRINDEX

Signature	ATTRINDEX
Default	true
Summary	Creates an attribute index whenever a new database is created. An attribute index speeds up queries with equality comparisons on attribute values; see Indexes for more details.

FTINDEX

Signature	FTINDEX
Default	false
Summary	Creates a full-text index whenever a new database is created. A full-text index speeds up queries with full-text expressions; see Indexes for more details.

MAXLEN

Signature	MAXLEN
Default	96
Summary	Specifies the maximum length of strings that are to be indexed by the name, path, value, and full-text index structures. The value of this option will be assigned once to a new database, and cannot be changed after that.

MAXCATS

Signature	MAXCATS
Default	100
Summary	Specifies the maximum number of distinct values (categories) that will be stored together with the element/attribute names or unique paths in the Name Index or Path Index. The value of this option will be assigned once to a new database, and cannot be changed after that.

UPDINDEX

Signature	UPDINDEX
Default	false
Summary	If turned on, incremental indexing will be activated: all update operations will also update the value index structures (texts and attribute values). The value of this option will be assigned once to a new database, and cannot be changed after that. The advantage of incremental indexes is that the value index structures will always be up-to-date. The downside is that updates will take a little bit longer.

WRITEBACK

Signature	WRITEBACK
Default	false
Summary	Updates on XML nodes are written back to the input files. Note that no backups of your original files will be created if this option is turned on.

AUTOFLUSH

Signature	AUTOFLUSH
Default	true
Summary	Flushes database buffers to disk after each update. If this option is set to false, bulk operations (multiple single updates) will be evaluated faster. As a drawback, the chance of data loss increases if the database is not explicitly flushed via the FLUSH command.

MAXSTAT

Signature	MAXSTAT [num]
Default	30
Summary	Specifies the maximum number of index occurrences printed by the INFO INDEX command.

Full-Text Options

STEMMING

Signature	STEMMING
Default	false
Summary	A new full-text index will stem all tokens and speed up queries on stemmed tokens. The same stemming normalization will be applied to all query tokens that are checked against tokens in this index.

CASESENS

Signature	CASESENS
Default	false
Summary	A new full-text index will preserve the case of all tokens. The same case normalization will be applied to all query tokens that are checked against tokens in this index.

DIACRITICS

Signature	DIACRITICS
Default	false
Summary	A new full-text index will preserve the diacritics of all tokens. The same diacritics normalization will be applied to all query tokens that are checked against tokens in this index.

LANGUAGE

Signature	LANGUAGE [lang]
Default	en
Summary	A new full-text index will use the given language to normalize all tokens. This option is mainly important if tokens are to be stemmed, or if the tokenization of a language differs from Western languages.

STOPWORDS

Signature	STOPWORDS [path]
Default	empty
Summary	A new full-text index will drop tokens that are listed in the specified stopword list. A stopword list may decrease the size of the full text index. A standard stopword list for English texts is provided in the directory etc/stopwords.txt in the official releases.

LSERROR

Signature	LSERROR [error]
Default	0
Summary	This option specifies the maximum Levenshtein error for the BaseX-specific fuzzy match option. See the page on Full-Texts for more information on fuzzy querying.

WILDCARDS

Template:Mark new index supports both fuzzy and wildcard queries.

Signature	WILDCARDS
Default	false
Summary	If a new full-text index is created, it will be particularly optimized for wildcards expressions. See the page on Full-Texts for more information on XQuery Full Text.

SCORING

Template:Mark new scoring model will focus on lengths of text nodes and match options.

Signature	SCORING [mode]
Default	0
Summary	A new full-text index will pre-calculate full-text scores. This option enables TF/IDF/based scores in full-text queries and increases main memory consumption while indexing. See the Scoring for more information on different scoring types.

Query Options

QUERYINFO

Signature	QUERYINFO
Default	false
Summary	Prints more information on internal query rewritings, optimizations, and performance. The query info will always be printed in the Info View in the GUI, or it can be activated with the -V flag on command line.

XQUERY3

Signature	XQUERY3
Default	true
Summary	Enables all XQuery 3.0 features supported by BaseX. If this option is set to false, the XQuery parser will only accept expressions of the XQuery 1.0 specification.

SERIALIZE

Signature	SERIALIZE
Default	true
Summary	Results of XQuery expressions will be serialized if this option is turned on. For debugging purposes and performance measurements, this option can be set to false.

BINDINGS

Signature	BINDINGS [vars]
Default	empty
Summary	Contains external variables to be bound to a query. Variable names and values are separated by equality signs, and multiple variables are delimited by commas. Variables may optionally be introduced with a leading dollar sign. Commas that occur in the value itself are encoded by duplication. If a variable uses a namespace different to the default namespace, it can be specified with the Clark Notation or Expanded QName Notation.
Examples	$a=1,$b=2   binds the values 1 and 2 to the variables $a and $b a=1,,2   binds the value 1,2 to the variable $a {URI}a=x or 'URI':a=x   binds the value x to the variable $a with the namespace URI.

SERIALIZER

Signature	SERIALIZER [params]
Default	empty
Summary	Contains parameters for serializing queries; see Serialization for more details. Keys and values are separated by equality signs, and multiple parameters are delimited by commas.
Example	encoding=US-ASCII,omit-xml-declaration=no : sets the encoding to US-ASCII and prints the XML declaration.

EXPORTER

Signature	EXPORTER [params]
Default	empty
Summary	Contains parameters for exporting all resources of a database; see Serialization for more details. Keys and values are separated by equality signs, multiple parameters are delimited by commas.

QUERYPATH

Signature	QUERYPATH [path]
Default	empty
Summary	Contains the path (base URI) to the executed query (default: empty). This directory will be used to resolve relative paths to documents, query modules, and other resources addressed in a query.

CACHEQUERY

Signature	CACHEQUERY
Default	false
Summary	Caches the query results before returning them to the client. This option may be set to true if the whole result is needed for further operations (such as is e.g. the case in the GUI of BaseX).

FORCECREATE

Signature	FORCECREATE
Default	false
Summary	By activating this option, the XQuery doc() and collection() functions will create database instances for the addressed input files.

RUNS

Signature	RUNS [num]
Default	1
Summary	Specify number of runs a query is executed. Results are printed a single time and evaluation times are averages of all runs.

Serialization Options

XMLPLAN

Signature	XMLPLAN
Default	false
Summary	Prints the execution plan of an XQuery expression in its XML representation.

COMPPLAN

Signature	COMPPLAN
Default	true
Summary	Creates the query plan before or after the compilation step. Query plans might change due to optimizations.

DOTPLAN

Signature	DOTPLAN
Default	false
Summary	Visualizes the execution plan of an XQuery expression with dotty and saves its dot file in the query directory.

DOTCOMPACT

Signature	DOTCOMPACT
Default	false
Summary	Chooses a compact dot representation.

DOTDISPLAY

Signature	DOTDISPLAY
Default	true
Summary	Visualizes the dot representation after the query execution.

DOTTY

Signature	DOTTY [path]
Default	dotty
Summary	Location of the dotty executable.

Changelog

Version 7.2.2

• Added: AUTHTIMEOUT
• Removed: WILDCARDS; new index supports both fuzzy and wildcard queries
• Removed: SCORING; new scoring model will focus on lengths of text nodes and match options

Version 7.2

• Added: PROXYHOST, PROXYPORT, NONPROXYHOSTS, HTMLOPT
• Updated: TIMEOUT: ignore timeout for admin users

Version 7.1

• Added: ADDRAW, MAXLEN, MAXCATS, UPDINDEX
• Updated: BINDINGS

Version 7.0

• Added: SERVERHOST, KEEPALIVE, AUTOFLUSH, QUERYPATH