configurations separate from application

[dhartford]

Hey all,
I'm looking to move the configurations (/application/web-inf/classes/meta-inf/*) to a different location like TOMCAT_HOME/shared/. For a precedence, see Alfresco.

The reason/intent is to allow binary updates without impacting/managing the configurations, particularly when you build a new dcma-webapp from sourcecode.

Are there any guides/information on this, or if there is a different approach used by the developer team such as process/approach. Also, some basic things like how to modify user-login (for testing just want to keep the ephesoft/demo approach), modify used database and where to put the jdbc, and what configurations I need to be careful from an open-source/CE development environment versus an Enterprise deploy (for those that need that feature, I currently do not...yet ).

p.s. if you have any other gotchas you want to share, great. For example, there was a number of System Environment Variables I saw created using the installer, not sure if those need to be setup on a fresh box when testing dcma-webapp from source-build only.

[dhartford]

There are some UNC paths in the database, while other UNC paths are in the config files.

This creates a large challenge for alternative/manual install processes. Note the sample-data.sql also contains these paths in some cases, but not all.


During setup:
batch_class table has monitored folder location per BatchClass saved as UNC path.

batch_class_config table has final-drop-folder location saved as UNC path per BatchClass.


Unknown when occurs:
JBPM4_LOB table has a jar:file:/.... UNC path location for jpdl.xml file name, but apparently contain a blob data representation of the file. Unsure if this could be a relative location in classpath instead of current fully-qualified UNC path.


During normal running:
batch_instance table has source batch folder UNC location (system).



Potential solutions to this challenge:

*Use parameter value for base folder locations instead of direct UNC, for example the \ephesoft\SharedFolders\ location is used for all but the workflow file locations. Have this be a .properties file in /META-INF/ of the application while the db only stores the reference value ( {shared.folder}\another-monitered-folder). If go this approach, definitely would recommend independent reference values in case want to separate location of 'monitored folders' from 'output folders' from 'system folders'. This unfortunately would lock you into single approaches to this problem.

-or-

*Have supporting administration interface that allows you to change these file locations from within the UI. Also include a 'sync-check' to help identify file locations that no longer exist (would be useful particularly for system/batch-instance files).

[dhartford]

Remove/mitigate Environment Variables which clutter up/increase complexity of installs and support of the system.
Instead, configure from property file used by application.

http://www.ephesoft.com/feedback/view.php?id=29