| Oracle® Calendar Administrator's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1.1) Part Number B14472-02 |
|
|
View PDF |
| Oracle® Calendar Administrator's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1.1) Part Number B14472-02 |
|
|
View PDF |
This chapter outlines the deployment and installation of the Oracle Calendar server and Oracle Calendar application system. Prior planning is an integral part of a successful implementation in your organization. You should read this chapter before installing the server to ensure that the installation is properly customized to suit your needs.
This chapter contains the following chapters:
To realize the optimal Oracle Calendar server configuration for your organization, you must first evaluate who your users are, how they should be organized, and how the product will be installed and managed. Consider the following factors:
Planning an Oracle Calendar deployment requires an understanding of the number of Oracle Calendar users anticipated. Moreover, it is important to understand Calendar server usage patterns by different users on different Calendar server nodes.
For all information about planning a logical division of users on Oracle Calendar server nodes, see "Planning for Oracle Calendar Deployment" in Chapter 5 of Oracle Collaboration Suite Deployment Guide.
As a final task in this deployment exercise, determine who will be responsible for the different tasks that are part of setting up and maintaining an Oracle Calendar system. The major tasks are:
System administration on the UNIX or Windows server (including monitoring and backups)
Adding, modifying, and deleting users, resources and event calendars
Manage administrative and public groups
Resource administration (assigning designates, creating categories)
Holiday administration
Front-line support
Client training
Different levels of administration tasks can be assigned to calendar users.
To ensure a quick deployment and minimize later tuning, you should consider a number of configuration issues before installation. Calendar server behavior can be controlled by parameters set in the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/misc/unison.ini file. For more information about these parameters see "Calendar Server Parameters" in Chapter 3 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual.
Evaluate operating system kernel parameters, and if necessary tune them for each installation. See Appendix B, "Adjusting Kernel Parameters for Calendar" for information concerning the relevant parameters for each supported operating system, the procedure used to alter the current values, and the formulas used to derive correct settings for your installation.
The [ENG] maxsessions parameter determines the number of available client connections to the calendar server. Set it high enough to accommodate the traffic and expected usage of each node, but be aware that setting this value too high will waste system resources.
The [LIMITS] allowattachments parameter enables or disables the ability of the calendar clients to attach files to events or tasks. If attachments are permitted, you can be limit in size using the [LIMITS] maxattachmentsize parameter.
The server offers four different group types: personal, members-only, public, and administrative. All users have the right to create personal and members-only groups. The administrator must assign the rights to create public and administrative groups must be assigned by the administrator. See Chapter 10 for more details on the differences between the group types and the methods used to change default administration rights.
The calendar server's authentication, compression and encryption (ACE) framework is an extensible system ensuring the security and integrity of all information passing from server to server and between servers and clients. By default, the ACE framework is enabled and cannot be disabled unless you are using a standalone installation of the Oracle Calendar server. If you are using a standalone installation, you can use the [ACE] frameworkenable parameter to disable the ACE framework. For more information on the ACE framework, see "Understanding the ACE Framework" in Chapter 2 of Oracle Collaboration Suite Security Guide.
You can set up resources either on a first-come first-served basis where double-bookings are not permitted, or to permit conflicts to occur. You can restrict resources to only a few users or make them available to all users with required approval. The default value for the [ENG] allowresourceconflict parameter prohibits double-bookings. See Chapter 8, "Managing Calendar Resources Accounts" for more details on managing resources.
Before launching the Oracle Universal Installer, whether installing Oracle Collaboration Suite or Oracle Calendar standalone, consider the information required from various prompts during the installation process.
Installing Calendar with Oracle Collaboration Suite
When installing Oracle Collaboration Suite, the Oracle Universal Installer, the only Calendar specific prompt will be a request to enter the Calendar server's host name alias.
Installing Oracle Calendar Standalone
Table 4-1 is a list of the items to consider before installing Oracle Calendar server in standalone mode with or without an external directory server. Each item listed in this table can help prepare for prompts from the Oracle Universal Installer when installing Calendar server standalone.
Table 4-1 Installation Information Checklist for Calendar Standalone Deployments
Ensure that you complete all the instructions in the Oracle Collaboration Suite Installation Guide.
Multiple instances of the calendar server can be installed on the same UNIX host (not on Windows). Whether one instance or many instances of Oracle Calendar are installed on one host, each instance will include many components which will be installed on the same host. These components include the Oracle Calendar server, Oracle Calendar administrator, Oracle Mobile Data Sync, Oracle Calendar Web client, Oracle Calendar Web services and Oracle Calendar SDK. To run different components on different hosts (for example, to run Web calendar clients on a different host from the calendar server) consider the following:
When the Oracle Calendar server is installed in a standalone mode, Oracle Calendar Web Clients identify themselves to the Calendar server using a shared key stored in both the Web client and server configuration files. This shared key must match exactly across all Web clients and server instances. See the Appendix C for more information about shared keys.
To use multiple Oracle Calendar server nodes, whether on the same host or distributed across multiple hosts, you must connect the nodes into a network. See Chapter 14, for details.
Consider the following factors when you install Oracle Calendar application system:
Because Oracle Calendar application system uses a shared memory mechanism, an Oracle Calendar application system installation must be run under one specific user on a host. A single user cannot have two independent Oracle Calendar application system installations, as they will share the same memory. However, having multiple users on a single machine is supported, because each user's shared memory is insulated from the other users.
For security reasons, it is best that Oracle Mobile Data Sync only be accessible through secure socket layer connections (HTTPS). You may also want to install Oracle Mobile Data Sync on a separate host for easier accessibility from phones.
Standalone installations of Oracle Calendar application system require Apache mod-fastcgi. You will need to find the latter through FTP access, as it is not readily available from the Apache Web site.
Generally, the default settings of the Oracle Calendar application system enable you to get the system working immediately after installation. However, there are some configuration options you should consider, depending on your environment.
See Also:
For more information about deploying Oracle Calendar application system see "Deploying the Oracle Calendar Web Client and Oracle Calendar Web Services" in Chapter 5 of Oracle Collaboration Suite Deployment Guide.The following list provides general configuration consideration for the Oracle Calendar application system:
Run several instances of ocas.fcgi (the number of instances depends on setup and load). You can configure this in ocas.conf file. For more information about modifying the number of fast-cgi processes running for the Oracle Calendar application system, see "Configuring the Number of Fast-CGI Processes" in Chapter 3.
You must run one instance of ochecklet.fcgi per installation or host. This is also configured in the ocal.conf file.
Make sure that the linkdb and sessiondb variables in all hosts' ocas files refer to the same path; for example, the same NFS mount. For more information about configuring the linkdb, see Configuring the Links Database in Chapter 3.
Set Authentication, Compression, and Encryption (ACE) values in each component's conf file. AUTH Web settings for all products should be configured in the [ACE_PLUGINS_CLIENT] section of the ocas.conf file. For more information about configuring authentication, compression, and encryption for Oracle Calendar application system, see "Securing Oracle Calendar" in Part I, Chapter 2 of Oracle Collaboration Suite Security Guide.
Make sure you restart Oracle Calendar application system or Apache after any changes to the conf files. For information on how to stop and start the Oracle Calendar application system when it has been deployed with Oracle Collaboration Suite, see "Starting and Stopping Oracle Calendar Application System" in Chapter 3 of this guide.
For more information about restarting Oracle Calendar application system, see Chapter 3, "Overview of Oracle Calendar Application System"
If you experience any problems, check for error messages in:
$ORACLE_HOME/ocas/logs/ocas_log
To see if the client and its components are running, open the system page at http://server:port/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=sys. If a component is not running, it will not appear in the system page.
To connect to a component with an appropriate client, use the following URLs:
Oracle Calendar Web client
http://<host>:<port>/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web
Oracle Mobile Data Sync
http://<host>:<port>/ocst-bin/ocas.fcgi
Oracle Calendar Web services
http://<host>:<port>/ocws-bin/ocas.fcgi
If you are using the Oracle HTTP Server in a Collaboration Suite installation of Oracle Calendar, Oracle HTTP Server is automatically configured to recognize the Calendar application system and the Calendar Administrator tool.
However, if you are running a standalone installation of Oracle Calendar using Apache or Oracle HTTP Server, add the following to the Web server's httpd.conf file in order to recognize the Oracle Calendar Administrator:
include $ORACLE_HOME/ocad/config/ocad.conf
(Make sure there is read access to ocad.conf.)
In addition, make the following changes to your httpd.conf file so that you can use the Oracle Calendar application system:
Include $ORACLE_HOME/ocas/conf/ocal.conf
Set the system library search path to include $ORACLE_HOME/lib
Set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable to the directory where Oracle Calendar is installed
Keep in mind that you may have to resolve conflicting settings if you customized your original Web server in a similar manner.
Restart the Web server after you make the changes.
Information about Oracle Calendar client deployments can be found in the End-User Documentation Portal. The End-User Documentation Portal is a set of customizable HTML pages that provide an overview of Oracle Collaboration Suite clients, including Calendar clients, as well as information about how to download, install, and configure clients. The End-User Documentation Portal also includes links to the FAQ & Troubleshooting site on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) as well as Oracle Collaboration Suite end-user tutorials.
A number of components, such as Mobile Data Sync, require frequent device certification updates. In such cases, the End-User Documentation Portal provides getting-started information for these components and links to OTN for device certification and configuration information.
The End-User Documentation Portal is included with the installation CD as a ZIP file.
For more information about the End-User Documentation Portal, see "Managing the End-User Documentation Portal" in Chapter 5 of Oracle Collaboration Suite Administrator's Guide.
