Configure Elastic Cloud (optional)

The release package contains everything that is required to use a co-located Elasticsearch instance by default. Only proceed with these steps if a remote Elasticsearch cluster is required.

To configure the Terminology Server to work with a managed Elasticsearch cluster two settings require attention.

Configure Terminology Server

First, the local Elasticsearch container and all its configurations should be removed from the docker-compose.yml file. Once that is done, we have to tell the Terminology Server where to find the cluster. This can be set in the file ./snow-owl/docker/configs/snowowl/snowowl.yml:

repository:
  index:
    socketTimeout: 60000
    clusterUrl: https://my-es-cluster.elastic-cloud.com:9243
    clusterUsername: my-es-cluster-user
    clusterPassword: my-es-cluster-pwd

Configure Elastic Cloud

The Snow Owl Terminology Server leverages Elasticssearch's synonym filters. To have this feature work properly with a managed Elasticsearch cluster our custom dictionary has to be uploaded and configured. The synonym file can be found in the release package under ./snow-owl/docker/configs/elasticsearch/synonym.txt. This file needs to be compressed as an zip archive by following this structure:

.
└── analysis
    └── synonym.txt

For the managed Elasticsearch instance this zip file needs to be configured as a bundle extension. The steps required are covered in this guide in great detail.

Once the bundle is configured and the cluster is up we can (re)start the docker stack. In case there are any troubles the Terminology Server will refuse to initialize and let you know what the problem is in its log files.