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Introduction

The schema installation has 4 main steps, regardless of platform:

...

Code Block
cd $RELEASE/phixflow-x.y.z-yyyymmdd/install

Create the database user

If you are  Database Administrator (DBA) and no database / login have previously been set up, you should use the following commands to create a new database / user.

Creating the database user is heavily dependent on the database platform, and will often have to be varied to meet local requirements regarding naming and security. These example commands will be adequate basic installations.

Platform

Create the database user

Oracle:

This command will prompt for the name of the user to be created.

Code Block
sqlplus SYS/SYSPassword@SID as SYSDBA @schema/oracle/install/create_user


Sql Server:

This command requires the user, the password, the login and the database to be provided as parameters.

Code Block
sqlcmd -S localhost\myservice -i schema/sql_server/install/create_database_and_user.sql -v dbName="phixflow" dbLogin="phixflow" dbUser="phixflow" dbPassword="mypass"


MySQL:MariaDB:

Anchor
mariaDBexampleDBcreateCommand
mariaDBexampleDBcreateCommand
Connect to the database as root (or an administrator):

Code Block
mysql --user=<myrootuser> --password

Create the user, supplying the name of the database, the user and the password in the commands below:

Code Block
create database phixflow CHARACTER SET = 'utf8' COLLATE = 'utf8_bin';
grant all privileges on phixflow.* to '<myuser>'@'%' identified by '<mypass>';
exit


Populate the Database

Once you have created the database and/or database user, run the Installer installer to create the database tables and initial data.

  1. In your command console, change to the directory where you extracted the release zip  then to the install directory. 
  2. Run the installation command for your database (listed below).

The customer name in the commands below must exactly match the customer name used by PhixFlow Support to generate licence files. This argument (–customer="Your Customer Name") is optional, but if you don't specify a valid customer name you will not be able to install the licence key and you will not be able to run any tasks in PhixFlow.

The database connection strings given here should cover most cases of connecting to PhixFlow's own database. For more details, see Database URLs for how connection strings are constructed for the various database platforms supported by PhixFlow.

Code Block
cd $RELEASE/phixflow-x.y.z-yyyymmdd/install

...

Code Block
java -jar bin/installer.jar -url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:phixflow" -user=myuser -pass=mypass -install -customer="Your Customer Name"

SQL ServerOracle (> 12c with PDB containers):

Code Block
java -jar bin/installer.jar -url="jdbc:oracle:thin:sqlserver@hostname://myhost\myserver;database=1521/phixflow" -user=myuser -pass=mypass -install -customer="Your Customer Name"

MySQLSQL Server:

Code Block
java -jar bin/installer.jar -url="jdbc:mysqlsqlserver://localhost/myhost\myserver;databaseName=phixflow" -user=<myuser>myuser -pass=<mypass>mypass -install -customer="Your Customer Name"

Further information on the installer

The database installation is now complete. For further information on the installer:

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MariaDB:

Code Block
java -jar bin/installer.jar -help

Install the Webapp in the Tomcat application server

Copy or Move the PhixFlow web application into Tomcat

To install the PhixFlow web application into Tomcat:

Copy $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow

Configure phixflow-datasource.xml

The PhixFlow webapp must be configured to give access to the database user that has been created to hold the PhixFlow data.

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-

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Code Block
languagexml
<property name="url">
	<value>[CONNECTION STRING]</value>
</property>
<property name="username">
	<value>[USERNAME]</value>
</property>
<property name="password">
	<value>[PASSWORD]</value>
</property>

Connection Strings

See also Database URLs for how to specify connection string URLs for the various database platforms supported by PhixFlow.

The platform-specific [CONNECTION STRING]s are:

Oracle:

Code Block
jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521:phixflow

Oracle (for containerised instances):

Code Block
jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521/phixflow
Panel
bgColor#e6f0ff
titleBGColor#99c2ff
titleOracle PDB containers

For Oracle 12c and above, you should use a '/' instead of ':' before [SID], so that [SID] is treated as a SERVICE name rather than an SID. This is due to Oracle 12c introducing pluggable databases (PDB's).

There is also the option to add the line 'USE_SID_AS_SERVICE_listener=on' to the tnsnames.ora Oracle configuration file in order to treat SID's as service names by default. This is provided by Oracle as a workaround for users who have hard-coded connection strings that are difficult to change by hand, and so should not be necessary for phixflow configuration.

For more information, please see the following Oracle documentation links:

USE_SID_AS_SERVICE_listener

Introduction to the Multitenant Architecture (including an explanation of PDB's)

SQL Server:

Code Block
jdbc:sqlserver://hostname\myservice;databaseName=phixflow

MySQL:

Code Block
jdbc:mysql://hostname/phixflow

Configure phixflow-instance.xml

The PhixFlow webapp instance must be configured to identify the instance and set whether the instance is active on startup.

For a single instance, non-resilient configuration, simply copy the example file phixflow-instance.xml.example to phixflow-instance.xml.

Resilient Configuration

A resilient PhixFlow configuration consists of 2 or more web applications all connected to a common database and configured such that at any one time, only one is active; the other instances will monitor the first and one will take over if they detect that the first has failed.

In such a configuration, set the instance name and id for each PhixFlow webapp instance to unique values and set leaderOnStartup to “true” for an instance if it should become active immediately on startup.

 e.g.:

Code Block
<!-- The instance name must be different for each member of the cluster -->
<bean id="clusterInstance"
	class="com.accipia.phixflow.service.cluster.main.ClusterInstance"
	p:name="MAIN"
	p:id=”1”
	p:leaderOnStartup="true"
/>

See Configuring for Resilience for more information.

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Configure phixflow-domains.xml

The PhixFlow webapp can be configured to authenticate users’ usernames and passwords against an external Domain / Active Directory server.

If you don’t want want to enable domain logins, simply copy the example file provided.

For more information on how to configure for domain logins, see the PhixFlow Active Directory Guide.

Configure log4j.properties

The log4j.properties file controls detailed event/error logging on the server.

To configure for default logging:

...

It is not necessary to make any changes to this file unless so instructed by PhixFlow Support.

Info
If it is ever necessary to change this file, those changes will take effect within a few seconds, without having to restart the Tomcat server.

Multiple PhixFlow instances

To install multiple instances of PhixFlow on a single server, complete the installation steps above to create a first PhixFlow instance. Then install a further instance:

  • Create a second database user to hold the data for the new instance.
  • Copy the PhixFlow web application into the Tomcat again:
Code Block
cp $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/alternative_name

where “alternative_name” is the name of your test system.

  • Be sure to set up a separate user and schema in the database for the new PhixFlow instance and to set phixflow-datasource.xml as needed
  • To ensure log messages are sent to a separate file, change the following line in log4j.properties
Code Block
log4j.appender.myAppender.file=logs/ alternative_name.logjdbc:mariadb://localhost/phixflow" -user=<myuser> -pass=<mypass> -install -customer="Your Customer Name"