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Installation Guide

# Preparing to Install Liquid Data

Before you install BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic, you need to verify that your system meets minimum requirements. This chapter provides information about supported platforms, system hardware and software requirements, and describes installation prerequisites. The chapter also provides an overview of what gets installed.

The following sections are included:

- Supported Platforms, Databases and JDBC Drivers
- Installation Prerequisites
- What Gets Installed

# Installation Overview

This section provides a high level overview of the steps required to install Liquid Data, illustrated in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1 Overview of Installation Process

To install Liquid Data:

1. Prepare to install the software.

Preparing to install Liquid Data involves checking the supported platforms and databases, and verifying that you have the installation prerequisites in place. You can also familiarize yourself with a description of what gets installed on your system. To prepare to install the software, complete the remaining sections of this chapter.

2. Install the Liquid Data software.

You can install Liquid Data either in GUI mode, featuring an easy to use graphical installer application, or in interactive Console mode, suitable on UNIX systems without a graphics (windowing) workstation. Alternatively, you can choose to install Liquid Data on Windows and UNIX systems using Silent mode, which reads an installer properties file to determine the install options.

For more information about using GUI mode, see Installing Liquid Data Using GUI Mode. For more information about using Console mode and Silent mode, see Installing Liquid Data Using Console or Silent Mode.

3. Perform post-installation tasks.

Following installation, you can verify that the installation was successful, and explore Windows shortcuts and UNIX paths to key components. For more information, see Post-Installation Tasks.

# Supported Platforms, Databases and JDBC Drivers

As a WebLogic Workshop application, Liquid Data generally supports the same platforms, operating systems, processor architecture, SDKs, and RDBMS systems as WebLogic Platform 8.1 SP4. In general any thread-safe, transaction-callable DBMS accessible through JDBC should be available to Liquid Data. For complete details see Supported Configurations for WebLogic Platforms.

Note: The minimum RAM recommendations are for one instance of WebLogic Server on which Liquid Data is running. You may need more memory if you run two or more instances of WebLogic Server and Liquid Data. Some systems use disk space as virtual RAM. Performance when running in virtual RAM may be markedly slower than when running in physical RAM.

## Supported Operating Systems and Hardware

The following operating systems and/or hardware that has been specifically tested with Liquid Data under BEA Platform 8.1 SP4:

- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server on x86
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter on x86
- Microsoft Windows XP on x86
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 AS, ES on x86
- Red Hat Linux 7.2 on x86
- Sun Solaris 8 on SPARC
- Sun Solaris 9 on SPARC

## Supported Databases

The following databases have been specifically tested with Liquid Data under BEA Platform 8.1 SP4:

- Oracle 9.2.0
- Oracle 10g
- IBM DB2 8.1
- Sybase 12.5.2
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000
- Informix 9.3
- Pointbase 4.4 (sample development only)

## Supported Database-JDBC Driver Matrices

The following describes results of testing Liquid Data against various databases under different JDBC drivers. Both the BEA and native drivers were tested in XA and non-XA modes. Limitation encountered are noted as CR numbers in the Comments column.

Details related to those numbers can be found in Liquid Data Release Notes.

Table 1-1 Matrix of Databases and JDBC Drivers Supported by Liquid Data

Database | JDBC Driver Type | Data Source Type | Comments
--- | --- | --- | ---
Oracle | BEA non-XA | tables | CR199675
|  | stored procedures | CR202963, CR212515
| BEA XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| Native non-XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures | CR212515, CR202962
| Native XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
DB2 | BEA non-XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures | CR227440
| BEA XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| Native non-XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures | CR227440
| Native XA | tables | CR227486
|  | stored procedures |
Sybase | BEA non-XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| BEA XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| Native non-XA | tables | CR223429
|  | stored procedures |
| Native XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
Informix | BEA non-XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| BEA XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| Native non-XA | tables | CR223486, CR226171
|  | stored procedures | CR230264
| Native XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures | CR230264
MS-SQL Server | BEA non-XA | tables | CR211701
|  | stored procedures | CR202041
| BEA XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| Native non-XA | tables | CR214730
|  | stored procedures | CR202041
| Native XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |
| BEA non-XA | tables |
|  | stored procedures |

# Installation Prerequisites

You must have the following software installed on the system where you plan to install Liquid Data:

- WebLogic Server or WebLogic Platform 8.1 SP4

WebLogic Platform 8.1 is available as a Web download from the BEA Download Center at http://commerce.bea.com/downloads/products.jsp. See the WebLogic Platform Installation Guide in the WebLogic Platform documentation for instructions on installing WebLogic Platform.

- WebLogic Workshop

You need to have WebLogic Workshop available to access Liquid Data extensions to the development environment.

Note: If you are running Windows 2000, the maximum classpath size can be exceeded. For this reason it is recommended that when you install Liquid Data, you install it into <`BEAHOME`> directory with a directory name of four characters or less such as <`BEA`>.

# What Gets Installed

The complete install of Liquid Data results in the installation of the following principal components on the system:

- Liquid Data (running as a component in WebLogic Platform).
- Liquid Data configuration and monitoring pages added to the WebLogic Administration Console.
- Liquid Data Workshop Control
- Liquid Data Console
- Liquid Data Sample Domain
- RTLApp Sample Application

For more information about the software, refer to the Liquid Data Concepts Guide:

For information on how to configure Liquid Data once you have installed it, refer to the BEA Liquid Data Administration Guide:

Note: When you install Liquid Data, a valid evaluation license is automatically included with the installation.

## Preconfigured Samples Domain

The full Liquid Data with Samples option provides a preconfigured samples domain as shown in the following table.

Table 1-2 Liquid Data Samples Preconfigured Domain and Start Commands for Samples Server

Platform | Windows and UNIX Paths to Start in Each Domain | Description
--- | --- | ---
Windows | `Start` —>`Programs` —>`BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1` —>`BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic 8.5` —>`Examples` —>`RTL Demo` or <WL_HOME>/samples/domains/liquiddata/`\ startWeblogic.cmd` <WL_HOME>/samples/domains/ldplatform/`\ startWeblogic.cmd` | Starts the Liquid Data RTL Demo server on Windows
UNIX | <WL_HOME>/samples/domains/liquiddata/`\ startWeblogic.sh` or <WL_HOME>/samples/domains/ldplatform/`\ startWeblogic.sh` | Starts the Liquid Data samples server on UNIX

Note: `<WL_HOME>` is the home location of your WebLogic installation, by default, `<WL_HOME>` is `c:/bea/weblogic81`.

For a detailed explanation of domains, see Creating WebLogic Configurations Using the Domain Control Wizard in the WebLogic Platform documentation.

## Internationalization Support

Liquid Data is internationalized and supports multi-byte data from the underlying data sources. Specifically, Liquid Data works with Japanese character sets, where the underlying databases are running in Japanese locales. In accordance with the XML specification, target schema element names must be composed of single-byte characters.