Configuration

1. Configuration File

The dcmqrscp and dcmqrti applications are configured via a configuration file. 
This configuration file defines global options, known Peer Application 
Entities (AEs), groups of Peer AEs belonging to the same vendor, local AEs 
(storage areas) and options specific to individual storage areas (file system 
path, read/write premission, quota and access permission for Peer AEs).

There are four different parts in the configuration file:

 1. Global Parameters
 2. Host Table
 3. Vendor Table
 4. Application Entity Table

All lines in this parts define one option and the entries in one line are 
seperated by white spaces.  Blank lines and lines which begin with a "#" will 
be ignored.  They can be used for structuring and as comments. The first entry 
in one line is the keyword.  All the other entries in the line will be the 
desired values.  A string value which should include spaces must be enclosed 
with quotes.  Known quote characters are """, "'", "(" and ")". An integer 
value must not enclosed with quotes.  A "=" may be used in addition to the 
white spaces between the two different entry types, a "," may be used in a 
value list.

1.1. Global Parameters

The Global Parameter part knows of the following keywords:

NetworkTCPPort       - integer value
MaxPDUSize           - integer value
MaxAssociations      - integer value
SpecificCharacterSet - comma separated list of string options
UserName             - string value
GroupName            - string value

There are default values for all these keywords hardcoded in the configuration 
module.

Example:

NetworkTCPPort       = 104
MaxPDUSize           = 8192
MaxAssociations      = 20
SpecificCharacterSet = fallback
UserName             = (do not change user)
GroupName            = (do not change group)

Available options for specific character sets are:

  "<character set>" - a character set, e.g. "ISO_IR 192" for UTF-8
  fallback          - retry with another character set if conversion failed
  override          - override the response character set with the given one
                      (otherwise the given character set will act as fall back
                      if enabled)
  transliterate     - enable transliteration of unsupported characters
  discard           - discard unsupported characters

NOTE: You must have root privileges to bind port 104 for DICOM association 
requests on Unix/Linux/Posix platforms as this is a privileged port number 
(i.e., a port number less than 1024.)  If you wish dcmqrscp to run as user/ 
group different from root, you must invoke dcmqrscp as root initially. 
dcmqrscp will switch to unprivileged user/group as specified by UserName/ 
GroupName keywords once it has successfully established the listen socket.


1.2. Host Table (AE Title/Presentation Address Mapping)

The Host Table part must be enclosed with the keywords "HostTable BEGIN" and
"HostTable END".  It is used to define symbolic names for a number of DICOM
peers.  A peer is a structure with the three values AETitle, HostName,
PortNumber seperated with white spaces and commas and enclosed with "(" and
")".

The right hand side of each entry effectively defines a mapping between
Application Entity Title and Presentation Address.  These entries are used
when establishing associations to remote Application Entities.

NOTE: in the current implementation you cannot substitute an IP address
for a hostname.

A symbolic name may be defined for a list of peers.  Symbolic names and peers
may be mixed to define new symbolic names.  A symbolic name must be defined
before used.  They can be used in the Vendor and Application Entity Table.

Example:

HostTable BEGIN
Acme_1 = (ACME_DN1, acme, 10001)
Acme_2 = (ACME_DN2, acme, 10001)
Acme_3 = (ACME_DN3, acme, 10001)
Acme   = Acme_1, Acme_2, Acme_3
HostTable END

1.3. Vendor Table

The Vendor Table part must be enclosed with the keywords "VendorTable BEGIN" 
and "VendorTable END".  The vendor table is used by the dcmqrscp and dcmqrti 
programs.  You can give a vendor name to the dcmqrti program and it will talk 
to all hosts and AEs of the vendor.  The dcmqrscp program can use the vendor 
table to restrict move destination to hosts belonging to a vendor.  A vendor 
name may be defined with a list of symbolic names.  The vendor name defined on 
the left hand side of an entry was used for the annotation of images in the 
CTN Display Program (ctndisp) which existed in earlier DCMTK releases. 
Currently the value is not used.

Example:
VendorTable BEGIN
"ACME CT Company" = Acme
VendorTable END


1.4. Application Entity Table

The Application Entity Table defines the local Application Entities managed by 
the dcmqrscp application.  Each local AE is associated with a separate storage 
area and defines a set of peer AE's which may communicate with the local AE. 
Peers attempting to associate with a local AE will be refused if they are not 
explicitly or implicitly mentioned.

The Application Entity Table part must be enclosed with the keywords "AETable 
BEGIN" and "AETable END".  The entry format is held in a very simple style:

ApplicationTitle        StorageArea     Access  Quota   Peers

where

 ApplicationTitle - string value
 StorageArea      - string value
 Access           - access format: "R" or "RW" or "W"
 Quota            - quota format: ( maxStudies, maxBytesPerStudy )
                    with maxStudies       - integer value
                         maxBytesPerStudy - string value
 Peers            - peers
                    with peers - list of ( Hostname, AETitle, Portnumber )
                               - list of symbolic names
                               - mixed list of symbolic names and peers
                               - keyword "ANY"

Example:

AETable BEGIN
ACME_PUB   /dicom/ACME_PUB R    (10, 24mb)   ANY
ACME_PRV   /dicom/ACME_PRV RW   (10, 24mb)   Acme
AETable END