Database Prerequisites

You'll find that both installation and upgrade go more smoothly if most database-related tasks are done before you begin installing. This is especially true if the database the application will be using is administered separately by a DBA. This section describes the database tasks that are required for a successful installation.

Note: If you're upgrading to a version whose database schema is different from the previous version, the application will automatically detect the difference after you've upgraded. When you next start the application and navigate to the admin console, you'll be prompted to start the database upgrade. This is a necessary step before you can start using the application after upgrade. You don't need to run any database-related upgrade scripts.

DBMS Issues and Notes

MySQL

MySQL Character Encoding Issues

MySQL does not have proper Unicode support, which makes supporting postings in non-Western languages difficult. However, the MySQL JDBC driver has a workaround which you can enable by adding <mysql><useUnicode>true</useUnicode></mysql> to the <database> section of your jive_startup.xml file. When using this setting, you should also set the Jive character encoding to utf-8 in the Admin Console.

MySQL 4.1 introduced better support for character encodings than previous versions. This functionality assigns a default character encoding to the database and its tables and columns. It's best to set the default character encoding for your database before installing the Jive schema so that you can be sure that you will not have encoding problems in the future. After creating your database, execute the following line in the MySQL console:

ALTER DATABASE <database name> DEFAULT CHARACTER SET <character set>;

For example, if you plan on using UTF-8 in Clearspace, you should enable the JDBC driver workaround mentioned above and then execute this line in the MySQL console:

ALTER DATABASE <database name> DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

MySQL Max Attachment Size Issues

You can fix the max attachment size problem on a MySQL server by following the directions here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/packet-too-large.html

The easiest way to change the MySQL server setting on Windows is to add a line to your my.ini file (you'll find this file in a location such as C:\database\mysql\5.0.19); on Linux, look for the my.cnf file instead. Add the following line after the [mysqld] section heading:

max_allowed_packet = 500M

After you add the line, restart MySQL.

Adjust the InnoDB Buffer Pool Size

When you have the database running on a dedicated server, you should increase the InnoDB buffer pool size from the default (8 MB) to up to 80 percent of the computer's available memory. If the computer has 2 GB of RAM or less, you should think about setting the buffer to something less than 80 percent to ensure that the operating system has enough memory to avoid swapping.

See the MySQL documentation for more on configuration.

SQL Server

Case Sensitivity Issues

SQL Server is case insensitive by default, creating special case sensitivity issues for Jive SBS, which requires a DBMS that matches strings with case sensitivity. The SQL Server issues differ between versions 2005 and 2008.

SQL Server 2005: Switching to case sensitivity in SQL Server 2005 causes Jive SBS to fail because the database also applies the case sensitivity rules to the queries themselves. Therefore, the application can only support SQL Server 2005 with case insensitivity set. However, this also creates a limitation in which the application does not support multiple usernames in which the only difference is case -- such as "Gladys" and "gladys".

SQL Server 2008: You can set SQL Server database and/or server collation (the character set used to store data in text fields) to support case sensitivity. If database collation is not specified, server collation will be used. The collation value you'll need to use is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AI.

You'll find more information on adjusting SQL Server settings in the SQL Server documentation:

Setting and Changing the Server Collation

Setting and Changing the Database Collation