Convelo Product Lifecycle Management

Installation Guide

Steven Werner

1.0.0


Table of Contents

Preface
1. Installation
Before You Begin
Environment
Tested Environment Configurations
Application Configuration
Unpack Distribution
Create and Configure Database
Deploy Web Application
Load Users
Access the Web Client

Preface

This document is the installation guide for Convelo Enterprise Open Source PLM. Convelo comes packaged with most application dependencies, however, the underlying infrastructure must be installed separately. The "Environment" section outlines the environment prerequisites.

Chapter 1. Installation

Before You Begin

Convelo utilizes the latest Java open source technologies, including the Spring Framework and Hibernate, for it's underlying infrastructure. Most application dependencies come packaged with the distribution. However, the application server (Tomcat, JBoss, etc) and database (MySQL, etc) must be installed separately. This section outlines the requirements for the runtime environment as well as tested configurations.

Environment

Prior to deploying the application, you will need to download and install several baseline components, including a JDK, database, application server, and configuration tools. The subsections below discuss the details of these components.

Java

Convelo requires Java 1.5. Download Java 1.5 from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp

Database

We recommend MySQL 4.1 but you can choose any database that is supported by the Spring Framework and Hibernate. MySQL can be downloaded from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/. Once you have the database installed, you will have to configure it with the instructions below.

App Server - Servlet Engine

We recommend Tomcat 5.5 but you can choose any app server or servlet engine that is supported by the Spring Framework. Tomcat 5.5 can be downloaded from http://tomcat.apache.org/download-55.cgi. See Tomcat website for installation and configuration details.

Configuration Tools - Ant and Maven 2.0

For some of the configuration steps discussed below, you will need Ant. Download Ant from http://ant.apache.org/

If you plan to build the application from source, you will also need Maven 2. Maven 2 can be downloaded from http://maven.apache.org/

Tested Environment Configurations

Convelo is built as a cross platform application and as a result, the application can be run on any operating system with most application servers and databases. Convelo is built and tested with the following environment configurations:

Operating SystemJDKServerDatabaseApplication FrameworkORM
Windows XPJDK 1.5.0_06Tomcat 5.5MySQL 4.1.14Spring 1.2.7Hibernate 3.1.2
LinuxJDK 1.5.0_06Tomcat 5.5MySQL 4.1.14Spring 1.2.7Hibernate 3.1.2

This list by no means makes other configurations invalid so if you test it on another environment, please contact us!

Application Configuration

Unpack Distribution

The Convelo distribution comes in several formats, including .zip and .tar.gz. After downloading the appropriate distribution, unpack it to a suitable directory.

Create and Configure Database

The out of the box configuration uses MySQL, but other databases can be used as well. Any database that is supported by Spring and Hibernate (which is almost all of them!) is supported by Convelo.

The database configuration is located in the convelo/convelo.properties file. The default configuration is:

PropertyDefault Value
db.drivercom.mysql.jdbc.Driver
db.urljdbc:mysql:///convelodb
db.usernameconvelo
db.passwordconvelo

To set up a new database schema that uses the default configuration settings above you need to:

  • Create a new database schema with the name "convelodb" by executing the following command:

    mysqladmin -u root -p create convelodb

  • Create a new database user with the name "convelo" and password "convelo" and grant necessary permissions:

    mysql -u root -p -e "grant all on convelodb.* to 'convelo'@'localhost' identified by 'convelo' with grant option;"

The application comes prepackaged with the driver (com.mysql.jdbc.Driver) for the MySQL database. If you are using another database, you will need to download the appropriate driver and update the db.driver property in convelo/convelo.properties. You will also need to add the driver jar file to the classpath.

Deploy Web Application

The distribution comes packaged with a war file for the Convelo web client. This war file contains a jar for the Convelo Core functionality as well as all the external dependencies for the application. As a result, it is extremely easy to deploy the application - just deploy the war file as you normally would to your application server or servlet engine. See appserver documentation for details.

Using Tomcat 5.5, place the convelo.war file in the webapps directory. When you start Tomcat, the war file will automatically be exploded and deployed on the Tomcat server.

Load Users

In order to access the application you will need to load default users into the database. For convenience, there is an Ant script packaged with the distribution for loading users. Go to the root directory where you unpacked the distribution. Make sure the build.xml file exists in this directory and execute the following Ant command:

ant loadusers

Executing this command loads the following users into the database:

UsernamePassword
adminrapid
anonymousUser 

Access the Web Client

If you followed all the steps discussed above, you can now access Convelo through a web browser. Open your browser (currently tested with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Firefox 1.0.6) and access the following url: http://localhost:8080/convelo. This will take you to the Convelo login page where you can login with the "admin" username and password specified in the section above.