Options

This page is linked from the Getting Started Section.

The options listed on this page influence the way how database commands are executed and XQuery expressions are evaluated. Options are divided into global options, which are valid for all BaseX instances, and local options, which are specific to a client or session. Values of options are either strings, numbers or booleans.

The .basex configuration file is parsed by every new local BaseX instance. It is used to store options to disk:

• Global options can only be set via the configuration file or system properties (see above).
• With Version 7.6 and later, local options can be specified after the # Local Options comment.

Various ways exist to access and change options:

• The current value of an option can be requested with the GET and changed with the SET command. All values are static: they stay valid until they are changed once again by another operation. If an option is of type boolean, and if no value is specified, its existing value will be inverted.

• Version 7.5: Initial values for options can also be specified via system properties, which can e.g. be passed on with the -D flag on command line, or using System.setProperty() before creating a BaseX instance. The specified keys needs to be prefixed with org.basex.. An example:

java -Dorg.basex.CHOP=false -cp basex.jar org.basex.BaseX -c"get chop"
CHOP: false

• Options can also be set in the prolog of an XQuery expression. In the option declaration, options need to be bound to the Database Module namespace. All values will be reset after the evaluation of a query:

declare option db:chop 'false';
...

• Version 7.5: Options can be locally set in XQuery via pragma expressions:

(# db:chop false #) { parse-xml('<xml> hi </xml>') }

If options are implicitly changed by operations in the GUI, the underlying commands will be listed in the Info View.

Global Options

General

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.

REPOPATH

Signature	REPOPATH [path]
Default	{home}/BaseXRepo
Summary	Points to the Repository, in which all XQuery modules are located.

DEBUG

Signature	DEBUG [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Sends internal debug info to STDERR. This option can be turned on to get additional information for development and debugging purposes. It can also be triggered on command line via -d.

LANG

Signature	LANG [language]
Default	English
Summary	Specifies the interface language. Currently, seven languages are available: 'English', 'German', 'French', 'Dutch', 'Italian', 'Japanese', and 'Vietnamese'.

LANGKEY

Signature	LANGKEY [boolean]
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.

GLOBALLOCK

Signature	GLOBALLOCK [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Controls if local (database) or global (process) locking will be used for managing read and write operations. The article on Transaction Management provides more details on concurrency control.

Client/Server Architecture

HOST

Signature	HOST [host]
Default	localhost
Summary	This host name is used by the client when connecting to a server. This option can also be changed when running the client on command line via -n.

PORT

Signature	PORT [port]
Default	1984
Summary	This port is used by the client when connecting to a server. This option can also be changed when running the client on command line via -p.

SERVERPORT

Signature	SERVERPORT [port]
Default	1984
Summary	This is the port the database server will be listening to. This option can also be changed when running the server on command line via -p.

EVENTPORT

Signature	EVENTPORT [port]
Default	1985
Summary	This port is used by the client to listen for server events. It will only be bound if a client attaches itself to a database event. This option can also be changed when running the server on command line via -e.

USER

Signature	USER [name]
Default	empty
Summary	Represents a user name, which is used for accessing the server or an HTTP service: The default value will be overwritten if a client specifies its own credentials. If the default value is empty, login will only be possible if the client specifies credentials. The option can also be changed on command line via -U.

PASSWORD

Signature	PASSWORD [password]
Default	empty
Summary	Represents a password, which is used for accessing the server or an HTTP service: The default value will be overwritten if a client specifies its own credentials. If the default value is empty, login will only be possible if the client specifies credentials. The option can also be changed on command line via -P. Please note that it is a security risk to specify your password in plain text.

SERVERHOST

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

PROXYHOST

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

TIMEOUT

Signature	TIMEOUT [seconds]
Default	30
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. It is ignored for ADMIN operations.

KEEPALIVE

Signature	KEEPALIVE [seconds]
Default	600
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.

PARALLEL

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

LOG

Signature	LOG [boolean]
Default	true
Summary	Turns Logging of server operations and HTTP requests on/off. This option can also be changed when running the server on command line via -z.

LOGMSGMAXLEN

Signature	LOGMSGMAXLEN [length]
Default	1000
Summary	Specifies the maximum length of a single log message.

HTTP Options

If BaseX is run as Web Application, the HTTP options are either determined by the web server, or specified in the webapp/WEB-INF directory and the jetty.xml and web.xml configuration files.

WEBPATH

Template:Mark this value is replacing the HTTPPATH option.

Signature	WEBPATH [path]
Default	{home}/BaseXWeb or {home}/webapp
Summary	Points to the directory in which all the Web Application contents are stored, including XQuery, Script, RESTXQ and configuration files.

RESTXQPATH

Signature	RESTXQPATH [path]
Default	empty
Summary	Points to the directory which contains the RESTXQ modules of a web application. Relative paths will be resolved against the WEBPATH directory.

HTTPLOCAL

Signature	HTTPLOCAL [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	By default, a database server instance will be opened along with the web server. If the flag is set to true, all commands will be executed in an embedded database context. If BaseX is run as Web Application, and if the flag is false, the server will be started as soon as the first HTTP service is called.

STOPPORT

Signature	STOPPORT [port]
Default	8985
Summary	This is the port on which the HTTP Server can be locally closed: The listener for stopping the web server will only be started if the specified value is greater than 0. The option is ignored if BaseX is used as a Web Application or started via Maven. This option can also be changed when running the HTTP server on command line via -s.

HTTPPATH

Template:Mark this value has been replaced with the WEBPATH and RESTXQPATH options.

Signature	HTTPPATH [path]
Default	{home}/BaseXHTTP or {home}/http
Summary	Points to the HTTP root directory, in which HTML files may be stored, and query files that will be evaluated by REST. This option can also be changed when running the HTTP server on command line via -l.

HTTPPORT

Template:Mark this value is now modified in the jetty.xml config file.

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

Create Options

General

MAINMEM

Signature	MAINMEM [boolean]
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.

CREATEONLY

Signature	CREATEONLY [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	By default, newly created databases will automatically be opened in order to be available for further processing steps. By setting the flag to true, this will be prevented.

Parsing

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 [boolean]
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 [boolean]
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 [boolean]
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.

XML Parsing

CHOP

Signature	CHOP [boolean]
Default	true
Summary	Chops all leading and trailing whitespaces from text nodes while building a database, and discards empty text nodes. By default, this option is set to true, as it often reduces the database size by up to 50%. It can also be turned off on command line via -w.

INTPARSE

Signature	INTPARSE [boolean]
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.

STRIPNS

Signature	STRIPNS [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Strips all namespaces from an XML document before adding it to a database.

DTD

Signature	DTD [boolean]
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.

Indexing

The current index and full-text index options will be stored in a new database, and take effect if indexes are rebuilt via the OPTIMIZE.

TEXTINDEX

Signature	TEXTINDEX [boolean]
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 [boolean]
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 [boolean]
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 [int]
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 [int]
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 [boolean]
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.

Full-Text

STEMMING

Signature	STEMMING [boolean]
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 [boolean]
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 [boolean]
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.

Query Options

QUERYINFO

Signature	QUERYINFO [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Prints more information on internal query rewritings, optimizations, and performance. By default, this info is shown in the Info View in the GUI. It can also be activated on command line via -V.

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.

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. This option can also be used on command line with the flag -b.
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   binds the value x to the variable $a with the namespace URI.

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

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.

RUNS

Signature	RUNS [num]
Default	1
Summary	Specify number of runs a query is executed by the XQUERY command. The result is only serialized once, and the measured times are averages of all runs.

Serialization Options

SERIALIZE

Signature	SERIALIZE [boolean]
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. It can also be turned off on command line via -z.

SERIALIZER

Signature	SERIALIZER [params]
Default	empty
Summary	Contains parameters for serializing query results: Keys and values are separated by equality signs. Multiple parameters are delimited by commas. The option can also be used on command line with the flag -s.
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.

XMLPLAN

Signature	XMLPLAN [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Prints the execution plan of an XQuery expression in its XML representation. This option can also be activated on command line via -x.

COMPPLAN

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

DOTPLAN

Signature	DOTPLAN [boolean]
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 [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Chooses a compact dot representation.

DOTDISPLAY

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

DOTTY

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

Other Options

AUTOFLUSH

Signature	AUTOFLUSH [boolean]
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.

WRITEBACK

Signature	WRITEBACK [boolean]
Default	false
Summary	Updates on XML nodes are written back to the input files. No backups of your original files will be created if this option is turned on. This option can also be activated on command line via -u.

MAXSTAT

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

Changelog

Version 7.6

• Added: GLOBALLOCK
• Added: store local options in configuration file after # Local Options comments.

Version 7.5

• Added: options can now be set via system properties
• Added: a pragma expression can be used to locally change database options
• Added: USER, PASSWORD, LOG, LOGMSGMAXLEN, WEBPATH, RESTXQPATHHTTPLOCAL, CREATEONLY, STRIPNS
• Removed: HTTPPATH; HTTPPORT: jetty.xml configuration file is used instead
• Removed: global options cannot be changed anymore during the lifetime of a BaseX instance

Version 7.3

• Updated: KEEPALIVE, TIMEOUT: default values changed
• 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