Contents of this Guide
Summary
Opal consists of a command line tool, opal that allows sub-commands in a console to perform different tasks.
This guide provides a description of the opal command.
Prerequisites
On server side: a properly configured Opal distribution. See Opal Installation Guide and Opal Configuration Guide for details about it.
On client side: a SSH client with connection information (host, port). On Windows, PuTTY SSH client is recommended.
Using Command Line Tools
Starting Opal Console
You have to be authenticated to perform commands on Opal. See with your administrator to get a user name and password.
The SSH port number can be configured (see SSH Server Configuration for details): 8022 is used by default.
Using PuTTY, enter the following session information: Opal server host, port and select connection type SSH.

On linux, use ssh client in a terminal:
ssh <username>@<hostname> -p <port>
Executing Commands on Opal Console
Once in the console, see Opal Commands for a description of the commands and Opal Commands Cookbook for Opal good practices and practical solutions.
Excel Files
Note that Opal supports both Excel 97 and Excel 2007 formats. When specifying an output file, Opal will choose which format to use through the extension of the filename specified:
| Extension | Format used | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| .xls | Excel 97 | 256 columns and 64K lines |
| .xlsx | Excel 2007 | 16K columns and 1M lines |
Be aware that the Excel 97 format only supports 256 columns. This limits the size of the tables that can be written to these files. Simply specify an .xlsx to support writing large tables (up to 16 000 columns).