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Database Setup

 

These steps are required when you convert from a demo/trial server installation to a production installation.

While you are demo-ing you do not need to do the Database Setup steps discussed below.

Your  server requires an SQL database for storing users and form submissions. The follow SQL databases have been certified:

The server may function with other SQL database types but only the above set has been certified.

The default HSQLDB is ONLY sufficient for demo/trial versions of . All production users MUST switch their software to a production quality database.

The following steps describe how to change the underlying database from the demo/trial HSQLDB to a production quality SQL database. The database configuration file frevvo.xml is located in <frevvo-home>/frevvo/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost directory.

On This page:

Select your database type

  1. First, Locate and copy the necessary jdbc driver for your database into <frevvo-home>\tomcat\lib.
  2. Edit the file <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\Catalina\localhost\frevvo.xml
  3. You will see two data source definitions for each database type. name="jdbc/frevvoDS" is the form submissions database. name="jdbc/userDS" is the user database. See the sample below of the HSQLDB data source in the frevvo.xml file.
  4. Comment out the pair of the definitions for the default database (HSQLDB) using the <!-- --> comment characters. The entire section must be commented out:
<!--
  HSQLDB Resource 
       <Resource auth="Container"
                type="javax.sql.DataSource"
                factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory"
                name="jdbc/frevvoDS"
                driverClassName="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"
                username="sa"                password=""
                url="jdbc:hsqldb:file:${catalina.home}/../data/db/forms"
                maxActive="200"
                maxIdle="20"
                maxWait="10000"
                validationQuery="select 1 from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SYSTEM_USERS"
                testOnBorrow="true"
                testOnIdle="true"
                timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
                removeAbandoned="true"
                logAbandoned="true"/>
 -->

Next, uncomment the pair of definitions for your database. Ex: if you are using SQL server, uncomment the definition for SQLSERVER Resource. Save the changes.

 <!--
                SQLSERVER Resource  
   -->
  
          <Resource auth="Container"
                factory="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory"
                maxActive="200"
                maxIdle="20"
                maxWait="10000"
                validationQuery="select 1"
                testOnBorrow="true"
                testOnIdle="true"
                timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="10000"
                removeAbandoned="true"
                logAbandoned="true"
                name="jdbc/frevvoDS"
                driverClassName="net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbcx.JtdsDataSource"
                username="root"
                password=""
                type="javax.sql.DataSource"
                url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost/frevvoSubmissions"/>

Configure the Live Forms submissions database

  1. The forms and users databases below must be created with UTF-8 encoding.

For your selected database type in frevvo.xml

  1. Locate the frevvoDS data source url parameter:url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost/frevvo". You can change the name "frevvo" to whatever you wish, "" for example. But it must match the database name you create in your SQL server. See verify connection Url below.
  2. Create a UTF-8 encoded database "frevvo" (assuming you left the url parameter database name as the default) in your SQL server
  3. In the  installation locate the script <frevvo-home>/data/sql/forms-<database type>.sql. Ex: for mySQL the script is named <frevvo-home>/data/sql/forms-mysql.sql
  4. Run that script in your "" database. That will create all the tables required to persist submissions
  5. Set the frevvoDS data source parameters username and password to a user that has write permissions to the "" database.
  6. The submissions database setup is now complete.

Configure the Live Forms users database

For your selected database type in frevvo.xml,

  1. Locate the userDS data source url parameter: url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost/users". You can change the name "users" to whatever you wish, " users" for example. But it must match the database name you create in your SQL server. See verify connection Url below.
  2. Create a UTF-8 encoded database "users" (assuming you left the url parameter database name as the default) in your SQL server
  3. In the  installation locate the script <frevvo-home>/data/sql/users-<database type>.sql. Ex: for mySQL the script is named <frevvo-home>/data/sql/users-mysql5.sql
  4. Run that script in the "users" database
  5. Set the userDS data source username and password parameter to a user that has write permissions to your "users" database.

Verify the Connection Url

Configuration of the connection Url is key to successfully connect the  server to your database. Consult your DBA to assist with connection issues.

For both data sources frevvoDS and userDS:

1) verify that the "url" parameter is pointing to the correct server. If  and the database server are collocated "localhost" may be fine.

The Url parameters depend on the database type and installation choices made when your DBA installed your database software. Consult your DBA for the correct connection values. For example, SQL server installed on a non-default port and running on a machine named e00sca will require that you add a port number and host name to the Url. For example:

<url>jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://e00sca:59377/frevvo</url>

As of SQL 2000, Microsoft SQL allows installation of multiple SQL named instances. If your SQL server was installed this way you must use the instance parameter. For example if you database instance was named xyzzy:

<url>jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://e00sca:59377/frevvo;instance=xyzzy</url>

2) Verify that the users and passwords required to connect to each database are correct.
3) Make sure that the users configured in the data sources have permissions to read and write to the respective databases.

Non Standard Databases

If you are trying a different database type and do not see an example in frevvo.xml for  your database, you can create a new data source entry. Hibernate supports the following dialects however  has only been certified to run with a subset of these databases. For additional dialects see Hibernate documentation. Database Setup

See the certified database list above for all the databases officially supported by frevvo.

  •  org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5Dialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle9Dialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect
  •  org.hibernate.dialect.Sybase11Dialect

UTF-8 Encoded Database

The forms and users databases must be created with UTF-8 encoding.

If you're using a improperly encoded database for frevvoDS or usersDS you may run into one or more of the following runtime issues:

  1. International characters will not work correctly without the proper encoding.
  2. Workflows directed to a specific user may not appear on the user's task list.

Setting the encoding depends upon the database you are using. Please consult your database documentation.

MySQL UTF-8 Example

These commands will create the proper  and users utf8 encoded database in mySql:

create database if not exists frevvo default character set "utf8" default collate "utf8_unicode_ci";
create database if not exists users default character set "utf8" default collate "utf8_unicode_ci";

You can convert a database and/or table to UTF-8. Using the mySQL configuration file or via the mySQL cmd tool.

Via the configuration file:

[mysqld]
default-character-set=utf8
default-collation=utf8_unicode_cii

Via the mySQL cmd tool:

ALTER DATABASE frevvo CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER DATABASE users CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE `frevvo16089`.`formsubmission` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci; 

Run the SQL Scripts

What does it mean to run the SQL scripts? The *.sql file is a text file with SQL statements to be executed by the SQL server. Here is one way to run an SQL script for a mySql database to create the tables needed by  on a windows box.

  1. Open a Command Prompt window 
  2. cd to <frevvo installdir>\frevvo\data\sql
  3. execute the command: mysql <my_db_name> -u <user_name> -p < forms-mysql.sql

This will prompt you for the mysql password for <user_name> and then execute the script creating all the required tables.

Install a JDBC Driver

's submission and user databases rely on the JDBC API. You can use any relational database as long as you have a JDBC driver for that database, however. See the list of certified databases. If you choose a database that's not in this list you do so at your own risk.

You MUST use the JDBC4 type driver.

The  download package comes with several pre-installed drivers. Look in <frevvo-home>/tomcat/lib and you will see (among other jar files) the following pre-installed driver jar files:

  • hsqldb-2.2.4.jar - HSQLDB driver
  • postgresql-9.0-801.jdbc4.jar - Postgress driver

If you don't find what you need pre-installed you will need to locate a driver compatible to your database. Usually you can download your driver from the internet. Try one of these locations

Once you have the driver you need, copy it to <frevvo-home>/tomcat/lib.

The <frevvo-home>\tomcat\logs\frevvo.log file will report an error if you do not copy the JDBC driver to lib directory. The verbiage may differ depending on the driver and database. For example, the error for MySQL is "Cannot load JDBC driver class 'com.mysql.jdbc.Driver". Starting without the correct jdbc driver displays an HTTP 404 error. Coying the correct jdbc driver to the <frevvo-home>/tomcat/lib directory should resolve the issue.

It is also appropriate to copy the driver into any location that is in the CLASSPATH of your servlet container. In a tomcat installation another location would be <CATALINA_HOME>/lib.

Changing Submission database naming and escaping conventions

In specific situations, your organization may require a certain naming convention for database objects (all uppercase, or at most 32 chars, or a specific name escaping convention) and the good news is that It is possible to change some of these parameters in  by setting a couple of specific web context parameters.

However, the bad news is that this is not completely supported by at this point. The main reason is that we cannot guarantee that all the existing functionality that we test before each release will work correctly for a given database when any of these settings is changed.

Note also that the following settings affect only the frevvoDS database schema (and not the userDS schema) and that any changes to these settings will force  to create a schema that is different than the pre-generated scripts found in frevvo/data/sql/forms-*.sql when the schema is initially empty (you have to start from an empty schema).

How can you make sure that all database object names are uppercase or lowercase? You can affect this by  editing the frevvo/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/frevvo.xml and adding the following parameter:

<Parameter name="teneo.naming.strategy" value="uppercase" override="false" />

How can you make sure that all database object names have a max length (e.g. Oracle specifies a max of 32 chars)? You can affect this by  editing the frevvo/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/frevvo.xml and adding the following parameter:

<Parameter name="teneo.naming.max_sql_name_length" value="30" override="false" />

How can you specify a custom name escape character? You can affect this by  editing the frevvo/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/frevvo.xml and adding the following parameter:

<Parameter name="teneo.naming.sql_name_escape_character" value="" override="false" />

 

Moving the forms database

Typically you should not need to move the forms database as these instructions only apply to 's built-in HSQLDB which should not be used for production use.

This information applies ONLY to the pre-installed demo database HSQLDB. When using the  tomcat bundle installation and the default configuration settings, the forms and users database is written to the <frevvo-home>\data\db directory. You may wish to locate the databases outside of <frevvo-home>. To do this:

  1. Edit <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\Catalina\localhost\frevvo.xml
  2. You will see two data source definitions for each database type. jdbc/frevvoDS is the form submissions database. jdbc/usersDS is for the user database.
  3. Configure the HSQLDB jdbc/frevvoDS Resource
  4. Change url="jdbc:hsqldb:file:${catalina.home}/../data/db/forms" to an absolute directory e.g. url="jdbc:hsqldb:file:c:\tmp\frevvo-data\forms"
  5. Configure the HSQLDB jdbc/userDS Resource
  6. Change url="jdbc:hsqldb:file:${catalina.home}/../data/db/users" to an absolute directory e.g. url="jdbc:hsqldb:file:c:\tmp\frevvo-data\users"

Failure to configure this resource correctly will cause issues trying to create new forms, view submissions and submit forms.

 

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