Tethys uses freely available software and may be installed and modified freely. Our server component relies on Microsoft ODBC technology for reading data from spreadsheets and databases and currently relies on the Windows operating system. In principal, this is portable to Linux and MacOS, but to date there has not been community demand for running the server on non-Windows operating systems. Tethys client software can be run on other platforms, but may require compilation of libraries in some cases.

Windows Installation

What should I download?

Links to specific versions are provided in the release history.

Starting with Tethys version 3, software is provided as in-place executables and does not require execution of an installer program. This change was made to permit the use of Tethys without administrative privileges.

Tethys 3.0 and later: Unzip the archive(s) to the folder where you wish to manage Tethys. In some releases, there are multiple archives so that users of client software do not have to download the databases. All files should be unzipped to the same folder as some Tethys software relies on folders being siblings of one another. The Documentation directory contains a “read me first” file that will get you started using Tethys.

Tethys 2.5 and earlier: Unzip the archive to a temporary folder, then execute the installer.

Requirements

As of version 2.3, Tethys requires a 64 bit Windows operating system. If you wish to add data to Tethys using ODBC technology which will allow imports from Microsoft Office documents (e.g. Excel, Access) or other databases, the machine running the server code must either have Microsoft Office installed or a freely available driver from Microsoft (details are in the Tethys manual). If a 32 bit version of Office is installed, the 64 bit server will not work and vice-versa. As Microsoft does not currently permit 32 and 64 bit Office drivers to be installed on the same machine, it is important that these match. Determining which architecture of Office is installed depends on the version of Office. For Office 2010, open an Office program (e.g. Word), then select File > Help, then look for About Microsoft Word (or other program). Next to the version line will be an indication of whether or not the program is 32 bit. Note that the clients and servers can work with one another even if the architecture versions do not match.

Firewall rules

Tethys runs RESTful web services on port 9779 (default, can be changed) and clients must be allowed to connect. Ephemeris service (e.g. sunrise/sunset) requires the server to be able to open outgoing connections on port 6775. Standard outgoing web ports must be enabled to access other environmental data.

Importing data

Note that to import data, you will need an appropriate open database connectivity (ODBC) connector. Details can be found in the user manual. Some common connectors that people might need:

  • Microsoft’s Access Database Engine (ACE) for Access and Excel documents if Microsoft Office is not installed. Note that Microsoft does not allow mixing of 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Office. For the recommended 64 bit version of the server, 64 bit Office is required.
  • MySQL relational database ODBC
  • PostgreSQL relational database ODBC
  • Oracle relational database ODBC

Tethys has been tested with the Microsoft ACE 2010 and MySQL drivers.

Release History

In July 2018, NASA JPL’s Horizons service which provides lunar and solar information for Tethys began requiring the use of https instead of http. Versions prior to 2.4.1 are not patched, but if you do not wish to upgrade to 2.4.1, you can edit the horizons.py server file, located in mediators/horizons.py of the server code directory.  At approximately line 278 (might depend on release) Horizon’s  URL address will contain:

URL = “http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons_batch.cgi?%s”%(join)

it should be changed to:

# JPL Horizons requires secure http effective July 2018
URL = “https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons_batch.cgi?%s”%(join)

Be sure to respect the indentation, proper indentation is part of the the server language’s (Python) syntax.

Brief notes on releases and links to zipped versions of current and older software.

  • 2025-02-20 v3.2 – Version 3.2 beta 2. We will be releasing version 3.2 beta 3 the week of March 17th, 2025. The offiical version 3.3 is likely to be released in mid April. Version 3.2 includes additional functionality in the R and MATLAB clients and requires one minor change to schemata for existing databases, see the release notes for details.
  • 2024-10-23 v3.1a patch – Fixes a bug in the R client and introduces new functionality and documentation for using R with Tethys. This is a patch release and as such does not contain a complete distribution. It patches Tethys 3.1 to 3.1a. The zip archive contains a file hierarchy that matches the directory structure of Tethys and will overwrite several existing files if extracted to the correct place. Modified folders are Server, RClient, and Documentation.
  • 2024-09-02 v3.1 – Provides compatability with PAMGuard 2.02.13 (2.02.13 release requires command line switch to enable, contact developers). Introduces new R client for querying Tethys. Updates to address web map API changes, schemata changes that will not affect most users, and fixes for Matlab client. See release notes for full details.
  • 2023-12-29 v3.0 – Major release. New functionality: Data explorer tool for interactive browsing of Tethys data, web-based data import, graphical planning tool for data import. Revised MATLAB client to make querying and interpretation of results easier. Data organization changes to reflect directions of the standards committee. Major updates to server technology: query caching and faster indices result in large performance gains, updated underlying database provider to Oracle Berkeley DBXml 12.1.6.4, migrated from Python 2 to Python 3.9.
  • 2019-07-11 v2.4.2 – Minor patch to include libraries deleted in Matlab’s Java 2018b and later.
  • 2018-07-25 v2.4.1 – Performance improvements, non administrative installs, and more, see release notes.
  • 2016-03-26 v2.3.2 – Patch, includes fixes from 2.3.1, and an updated demonstration database and examples (function dbDemo in the Matlab client).
  • 2016-02-09 v2.3.1 – Superseded by v2.3.2. Patch for v2.3, includes a fix for translating Excel files that include multiple rows of user-defined Detection parameters.
  • 2016-01-05 v2.3 – Superseded by 2.3.2. Multiple source & Performance release. Can now import from multiple data sources using the GUI. Greatly increased performance retrieving Detection and Effort records in Matlab. Extended Matlab query input options. ITIS expanded to all Animalia. Documentation updates. Various bug fixes.
  • 2015-04-28 v2.2 – Multiple source pre-release. Various bug fixes, implemented new server-side data parsing for imports. Visible changes: Import GUI restructuring and improvements, Quality Assurance schema elements added to Detections and Deployments, Ensembles container implemented.
  • 2014-12-31 v2.1 – Minor bug fix release. Visible changes: Imports now permit elements to not be generated when there is no data for them, improvements to the import user interface.
  • 2014-02-24 v2.0 – Major release. Visibile changes: Better ERDDAP support, release of 64 bit version that improves speed and removes problems seen with large ERDDAP transfers. Server now caches external queries, making development much faster. Improvements to XML parsing time for Matlab. Better graphical user interface for document submission. Server now supports a RESTful architecture.
  • 2013-05-10 v1.0 – Initial release

Source Code

Source code is available for Tethys on BitBucket. Please note that 3rd party products installed with Tethys are not part of the source code.