A Provider is a concept introduced by a TM4J. In short, every provider uses a particular backend (memory, relational databases etc...) and holds any number of topicmaps.

Opening a Topicmap effectively means "adding a topicmap to a provider" and therefore it becomes obviously, that without any open provider, no topicmap can be opened in TMNav.

TM4J comes with several precoded-providers. For a more in depth discussion about providers and related concepts, please refer to the TM4J-documentation.

To open the dialog, navigate to the File-Menu in TMNavs global menubar and choose Manage Providers...

After the Dialog opened, you find a Combo Box in the upper right corner, where you can select any of the already open providers.

In the center of the dialog, a list of all the topicmaps that the provider currently holds is displayed.

Clicking on the Close Provider-Button closes this provider. This means, that access to the contained Topicmaps is stopped.

Clicking on the Add Provider...-Button opens another Dialog.

This dialog enables you to add a new provider to your TMNav-Enviroment.

Choose a Provider Description. In the upper right corner of the dialog you find a Combo Box which lets you choose a Provider Description. For every kind of provider you want to add, TMNav needs a Provider Description. Please refer to the Configuration-Chapter for a more in depth discussion of how to supply additional provider descriptions.

TMNav comes with preconfigured descriptions for the in-memory and for the hibernate-provider.

Choose a Name. You may enter a name for the provider you are about to create in the little textbox, labeled "Name". Entering a name is optional, but it is helpful when you start adding topicmaps to that provider.

Reading the hints. The following textfield may give you additional hints about the choosen provider. Especially additional jars, that you must add to your classpath, should be mentioned here.

Supplying property-values. The values for the properties will be passed to the provider at creation time. What kind of data a provider recognizes difers from provider to provider. Please refer to the TM4J-documentation for a more detailed overview of provider parameters.

If the creation of the provider fails, please ensure that your classpath contains the .jar file that contains the provider as well as all additional jars that the provider needs to function correctly. Check the logs for ClassNotFoundExceptions in order to isolate the missing classes