Page History

...

After investigating configuration options in Tomcat and Glassfish and looking at installation procedures for popular Java web applications, we've identified four types of installoptions for Roller installation.

Option 1) Property file based configuration

In this case, a user configures the webapp by editing a simple configuration file that specifies the DB connection and mail server configuration; effectively by-passing all application server configuration files. When the webapp loads, it creates and upgrades database tables as needed and the installation is complete.

If we take this approach, we should also support JNDI named resources – some folks won't want to by-pass app server resources. We can do this by first checking for DB and mail properties and if they are not found, we fall back to JNDI resources.

...

In this scenario, the Roller WAR does it all. You just drop it in, browse to the main page, enter database connection parameters and Roller automatically creates all server resources, creates/upgrades tables and restarts itself if necessary. It also makes a killer lasagna and cleans your bathroom.

• Roller prompts user for configuration parameters, does all setup
  • Creating JNDI data-source and mail-session if needed
  • Or creating property file for non-JNDI based installation
• Roller can create/upgrade tables as needed
• Pros:
  • Easy UI driven installation
  • Does everything!
• Cons:
  • Need to develop separate logic for each Servlet container / app server
  • May be difficult or impossible for some servers
  • May require application server jars in Roller's WEB-INF/lib directory

...