Re: Running OFBiz in Tomcat, without embedded container

[David E Jones]

Jonathon,





-David


On Jan 10, 2007, at 12:42 PM, Jonathon -- Improov wrote:

Please don't consider the remarks from Chris Howe as a representation of anything official or sanctioned by the project, and I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if you were "generous" enough in your thinking to not consider this to have anything to do with Apache OFBiz itself. These are un-moderated mailing lists and anyone can post anything they want. In general I extremely highly recommend following "official" project resources, starting with the ofbiz.apache.org home page where everything it linked from.

Chris,

Ok, that was a long way of saying that the HtmlFormWrapper has an open issue. I'll try not to be confused. Not sure whether you're saying my experimentation results were correct, or off base. Perhaps everyone, including myself, is just too pressed for time. So I'll state publicly (and officially?) that I don't expect obligatory responses from the mailing list. (Apparently things don't quite work both ways here; charity doesn't quite elicit charity). Anyway, here's the new How-To for deploying "virtual instances" of OFBiz operating on separate databases. Duplicate all the webapp / <webappname> folders, and change the delegator in web.xml, at least until Chris Howe's Issue With HtmlFormWrapper is fixed. There, done. I sure hope the above 1-liner how-to hasn't been posted somewhere, or I might get another rant from you. :) I'll try harder to read up for the answers before posting questions. Though it does seem I tend to get answers from some veterans here THE VERY MOMENT I chance upon the answers myself. Hmm. Is there some kind of feud going on between veteran and novice (underdog?) members I'm not aware of here? So, what is it really? Do you want me to post my findings here, or not? Just tell me not to, and I'll gladly refrain from contributing further. Not that I'm contributing much that is useful during this early stage anyway. I mean what do I know, right? Thanks for pointing me to JIRA, anyway. I thought JIRA for OFBiz was down because I kept hitting http://jira.ofbiz.org/browse/ OFBIZ-890 . (See http://lists.ofbiz.org/pipermail/jira/2006-May/ 003933.html).

Jonathon



Chris Howe wrote:

As for the lacking documentation, I personally prefer to learn from the community than have folks spend inordinate amounts of time writing leather bound pages fit for even marketing material. That's my stance regarding documentation, in case you don't know or misunderstand. Ah, that was too long already. Maybe David E. Jones was right that many folks just benefit from the community and then disappear. Though I now wonder what the exact cause may have been. PS: To Torsten, I believe you have your answers from my posts thus far. I can't help you further because it seems it's wrong to do so! Just kidding. Mailing list has no problems, really. I hope you enjoy OFBiz as much as I do. It really is quite a piece of work. The lack in documentation speaks 2 things, I believe: the scope of OFBiz, and the rate of development (time spent more on coding than docs).

Jonathon,
I'm conflicted.  I can't speak for others, but this is
my take.  Generally, I'm more than happy to point people new to
OFBiz in the direction to find a solution.  Oftentimes
I even mistakenly coddle too much and provide a
solution that lets them get in over their head without
the understanding of why some things work the way they
do.  I must say, I don't feel inclined to provide you
with very much help and I can't quite put my finger on
the exact why of it.  I suspect it's your claim that
you've read everything and exhausted your search for
the answer before diving into the code and then your

disinclination.  However, this is the perfect example
of such scenario.  Running multiple instances of Ofbiz
has been addressed a number of times.  BJ Freeman
wrote up a how to on his experience (although with the
change from jetty to tomcat, some of it is old, but
should be similar) it's located in the old wiki that

in beanshell scripts has already been outline in
http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-278

documentation is still largely dispersed, it is
getting much better.  There really hasn't been one
issue that you've brought up that hasn't been
addressed in either the Apache OFBiz mailing lists
Apache Ofbiz Jira
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ
docs.ofbiz.org the old wiki http://ofbizwiki.go-integral.com/
or the old mailing lists: http://lists.ofbiz.org/
with additional tips being provided by a handful of
other sources.  All of these are on the ofbiz.org
site.  I think I'd be happy to point out exactly where
things are documented for a particular problem if
you'd ask for help in a manner that didn't seem as if
you have already read them and the information
provided was insufficient.
I think my rant is done now.
--- Jonathon -- Improov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

disdain for the way some solutions are structured. But I can't be sure if that's the entirety of my is referenced on the ofbiz.org website. This particular issue about the HtmlFormWrapper used which was brought over from the old JIRA. While I'd be one of the first to agree that

Hi Andrew,

More observations. Seems like it's a bad idea to

folder.

I tried changing the 2 WEB-INF/web.xml files to have

dispatcher for: manufacturing2". No go. Tried making

them the same. No go.

All that's left is to copy the 2 affected .xml files

routing/CalendarForms.xml .

To Torsten,

Here's what you'll need to get Manufacturing working
with Andrew's "single OFBiz multiple databases/domains" method:

In applications/manufacturing/

- Patch webapp/manufacturing/WEB-INF/controller.xml
with
   manufacturing_controllerxml.patch .

- Move
webapp/manufacturing/jobshopmt/ShowProductionRun.bsh
to
   scripts/org/ofbiz/manufacturing/jobshopmgt .

- Copy from webapp/manufacturing/ to
webapp/manufacturing2/ files
   jobshopmgt/ProductionRunForms.xml and
routing/CalendarForms.xml

For the other applications, just go to their
webapp/<webappname>/WEB-INF/actions/ folder, and do
a grep for "htmlformwrapper". Also, do a grep for

don't recommend moving files around like that.)

Hmm. Come to think of it, you'd be better off just

deployment: CRMSFA links to Order module.

For those who are doing "virtual instance"


Jonathon

Jonathon -- Improov wrote:

have widget/*.xml refer to webapp/manufacturing/WEB-INF/actions/ *.bsh that in turn use HtmlFormWrapper. It appears the HtmlFormWrapper can only read files under the webapp different dispatchers for each webapp (manufacturing and manufacturing2). I checked the logs to see that there are 2 messges: "Created dispatcher for: manufacturing" and "Created over. The 2 files are read by *.bsh files in webapp/manufacturing/ WEB-INF/actions/: jobshopmgt/EditProductionRun.bsh and routing/ ListCalendarWeek.bsh . They read 2 .xml files in webapp/manufacturing/: jobshopmgt/ProductionRunForms.xml and and "<event type=\"bsf". You'll want to copy over those .bsh files that are invoked with a non-null "path" value. (In the above Manufacturing example, I moved the file into script folder. I duplicating all of the webapps. That'll cost you just 7MB per "virtual instance". Moreover, you never know when the OFBiz developers will add in new instances of the above pattern to break your "virtual instances". There's at least 1 tricky connection if you intend to have the trimmest deployments like this, watch out for broken functionalities. There are at least a score of them.

Hi Andrew,

Copying just the web.xml and controller.xml worked

for every application

except Manufacturing. So it wasn't my imagination

after all.

Is there any way to specify a non-webapp resource

for HtmlFormWrapper?

If not, what is the alternative. Jacopo (who takes

care of the

Manufacturing module?) might want to look into

this too.

Jonathon

Jonathon -- Improov wrote:

Andrew,

Got on fine. You're right, I just needed the

web.xml and

controller.xml . I was testing with

/manufacturing/control (without

/main), and I thought it didn't work.

Now I can set up 2-3 virtual instances of OFBiz

with no more cost than

one physical instance! That's all I require for

my testing needs.

Well, of course, there's harddisk space required

for MySQL databases

(100-300MB for each virtual instance).

I suspect RAM costs is the same as for one

physical instance. After

all, this isn't EJB.

Thanks, Andrew! I hope Torsten is reading these.

He's been asking

about this topic for some time now, I think. A

little later, I'll try

to put up some documentation.

There's still no clean way to deploy 2 different

versions of OFBiz on

a single catalina engine, though. But I suppose I

can try to view

OFBiz as a collection of softwares (modules),

rather than a single

simple entity.

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