Hi All,
today I got my first, and mostly functional, G 1.1 build and succeeded in deploying my first DB2
data source through the console. I choose DB2 because of the multiple jars.
My impression at the end was, it is even more complicated than the previous version. The new naming
convention is not exactly "charming"! :)
I think it is most likely that copying the jars to the repo will be a "command line" task since you
already have to change (version) the name of the jars. Once you have the drivers in place then you
move to the console and try to deploy the data source.
Using the console to install the jars is certainly better than doing it one-by-one manually but
still there are 5 fields that need to be filled/verified for each jar to be installed. I think the
option of choice for installing (copying) the drivers would still be the command line unless we can
simplify the GUI process.
One way of simplifying it could be:
1- use the wizard to create a data source (first step as usual)
2- From the Driver Jar pull down menu...
- it might be better to have a scroll down box where you can select
(ctrl+) multiple
jars if needed.
- in the same scroll box have an option to install other drivers not listed
other drivers not listed:
- have a browse button to select multiple files to install in the same
single operation
if the files are already available locally (instead of going through
the common
libraries). This option should keep to a minimum user
required input.
The multiple files selected serve one single purpose, hence it would
be nice to have them
treated (listed) as a block, for example *DB2 8.1 JARs*
- provide a download option (already available)
- once the driver is installed continue with the regular existing
procedure.
3- Optionally configure some of the connection pool parameters (timeouts, min
and max pool sz, etc)
4- Test and deploy
When editing an existing data source it would be nice to have the option for *Testing* the
connection again.
Cheers!
Hernan
Matt Hogstrom wrote:
All,
I was looking at Aaron's "Guiding Principals" doc and rmembered I meant
to post some thoughts on the "Geronimo Experience."
I've been working on deploying daytrader and have noted a couple of
things that I think are relevant from a user perspective. Specifically
these around the repository.
For my testing I've been using DB2 as the database as I wanted to use a
commercial database that was external to the AppServer. The same story
is true for MySQL, PostGres, etc.
In order to deploy a dependent jar into the repo you have to add the
group, artifact and version information. So in the case of DB2 there
are two jars you have to add. They are the db2jcc.jar and the
db2jcc_license_cu.jar. Putting them into the repo I did the following:
mkdir -p
./geronimo-1.1-SNAPSHOT/repository/com/ibm/db2/db2jcc_license_cu/8.1/
mkdir -p ./geronimo-1.1-SNAPSHOT/repository/com/ibm/db2/db2jcc/8.1/
Then I copied the jars into the repo:
cp db2jcc.jar
./geronimo-1.1-SNAPSHOT/repository/com/ibm/db2/db2jcc/8.1/db2jcc-8.1.jar
cp db2jcc_license_cu.jar
./geronimo-1.1-SNAPSHOT/repository/com/ibm/db2/db2jcc_license_cu/8.1/db2jcc_license_cu-8.1.jar
For the most part this is certainly doable but is actually pretty
tedious. Also, following the convention, the artifactname and the
version are duplicated in the actual deployed jar; seems a bit redundant.
I wanted to validate that my usage is correct per the original design.
If it is I think we're probably missing one of the points in Aaron's doc
about the server being simple to use. At least this is not intuitive.
If my understanding is wrong or there is a better suggestion on how to
handle this please post back. I'm working on the documentation for how
to deploy DayTrader. Since this is a very visible use case for the
server I want to make sure this is the direction we are going to
recommend for users.
Perhaps another approach is to use the shared lib that was recently
added (I have to go back through the e-mails to see how to set it up).
I think that paradigm is more in line with Tomcat users as well as other
AppServers.
Thoughts?
Matt
