AEE Lab Experiment Double Auction Installation Instructions

System Requirements

Both the server and client programs are written in Java and works on Windows and Linux platforms.

You will need to have the following installed in order to run this experiment:

Server Machine

• Apache Web Server (Windows Download) (Installation instructions) 
• Java Runtime Environment 1.5 (Windows Download) or higher

Client Machines

• Java Runtime Environment 1.5 or higher
• Web browser with Java enabled

Server Set-up

• Download the server program from here. Unpack the files to a directory on your computer. The zipped file contains the server program "DoubleAuctionServer.jar" and a number of sample text files. 
• Create a new directory where you will store all your output files. It is strongly recommended you make a new one as all existing contents of this output directory will be deleted each time you run an experiment. 
• Double-click on "DoubleAuctionServer.jar". If you have Java installed, this will open two windows: a Control Panel (Figure 1) and an Experimental Results page (Figure 2). In order to run an experiment, you will need to specify the initialization file to use and the directory in which output files will be saved. 

Figure 1. Server Control Panel

Figure 2. Server Experimental Results Page

• Click on "Output Directory" in the Control Panel. Navigate to the folder you just created and then click "Open". Alternatively, you can right-click on the mouse and the option to create a new folder will pop up.
• Click on "Load Init File". There are a number of sample files included with the server program, most are named "SampleInit*_DA_np.txt" where n denotes the number of participants in the experiment. For this example, choose "SampleInit01_DA_7p.txt". This sample file specifies the server to run using seven participants. It also has the auto-login feature enabled, so that participants do not need to log-in their details at the start of the experiment.
• The server program will start and you will see the control panel change to reflect the participant information (Figure 3). 

Figure 3. Control Panel after loading initialization file SampleInit01_DA_7p.txt

• The server is now ready to accept connections from seven participant clients. 

Client Set-up

The client program will be accessed by client terminals using HTTP. Thus, unlike the server program which can be installed and run from anywhere on the server computer, the client program has to be placed in a directory within the "htdocs" folder of your Apache web server installation. 

• Download the client program from here. This file contains two versions, one without the bid improvement rule and one with this rule enabled. Each version consists of a simple web page named "DAclient_version.html", which calls Java to execute the corresponding client program "DAclient_version.jar".
• Unpack the file and place it in the "htdocs" folder within your Apache installation directory. For instance, if you installed Apache 2.2.4 in "C:\Program Files", you should place the client folder in "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\".
• Open a web browser in your client machine. It is recommended you test that the server and client programs can communicate with each other by running both programs on the same machine first before using remote machines. This will eliminate all other points of failure such as network problems and firewalls.
• On the web browser, type in the path to "DAclient_version.html" on the URL field. For instance, if you placed the folder "01bDoubleAuctionClient" in "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\",  you are running the client and server on the same machine, and you want to run the version with no bid improvement,  the correct URL will be "http://localhost/01bDoubleAuctionClient/DAclient_noBidImprovement.html". Note that here localhost denotes the machine you want to connect to, and everything that follows (/01bDoubleAuctionClient/DAclient_noBidImprovement.html) specifies the directory and filename of the web page you wish to load and are therefore case-sensitive.
• If the server is running using the initialization file "SampleInit01_DA_7p.txt", the client web page will load the java program and the first participant to connect will see the trading screen in Figure 4.  Auto-login is enabled in the initialization file, so participants will not be prompted to login but will instead be automatically assigned a fictitious identity and will be taken directly to the trading screen. Autologin can be disabled by commenting it out of the init file.

Figure 4. Participant trading screen

• As each participant logs in, the information on the server's control panel will change to reflect their status. 

• Once all participants have logged in, the experiment can begin by clicking the "Start" button on the server's control panel.

Additional Notes

• All participants must be logged in before the experiment can commence. The "Start" button on the control panel will not be accessible unless the expected number of participants for this experiment has connected to the server.
• If you are in the middle of an experiment and a participant gets disconnected, the experiment will automatically stop. You will need to click "Rebuild Clients" on the serve's control panel in order to re-initialize everything and start again.
• If you wish to run the clients on remote machines, you will need to know the IP address of the server machine. You can find this out by opening a command prompt (Windows "Start" => "Run" => Open "cmd") and typing ipconfig on the terminal. Replace localhost with this IP address in the URL field above to access the client program remotely using your web browser.
• If autologin is disabled or you, you should see a login page similar to the one below.

Last Modified: 17 October 2007

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