Whenever I see a task on my list that requires the setup of LiveCycle DS I cringe, as Adobe could not have made this process more obnoxious to get off the ground. I am going to highlight the steps here that I follow, for nothing more than to be able to reference this for myself in the future.
Step 1
117,520kb, not bad
Download LiveCycle DS from Adobe. Click Here
Step 2
$30,000 Per Processor YIKES!
Purchase a License for the Product. Contact Me as I am an authorized reseller and can get you a decent discount.
Step 3
The Automated Installation
Follow the easy to follow directions in order to setup the data services using the turnkey Apache server, or your own Java Servlet Container.
Step 4
Where the hell is the SQL Server support?
For some reason the newer installations don't have SQL Server support, oh well, download this file and save it to your \lcds\tomcat\lib folder. This may be a licensing violation, but I am not sure as the file used to exist in my lcds installation. Contact me if you have information about this.
Step 5
Create your own Web Application
Copy the contents of the folder /lcds/tomcat/webapps/lcds into a directory that is representative to your application. Like /lcds/tomcat/webapps/MySuperCoolWebSite.
Step 6
Go Away Security
Enable Remote Development Services, or RDS, in the file /lcds/tomcat/webapps/MySuperCoolWebSite/WEN-INF/web.xml by uncommenting out the section represented between "<!-- begin rds" and "end rds -->". Also be sure to set the value of the parameter named "useAppserverSecurity" to "false".
Step 7
Stupid Port Conflicts
If you start the server now, all of the ports will break as they will conflict with the ports that have been defined for the lcds web app. Open the file /lcds/tomcat/webapps/MySuperCoolWebSite/WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml and increment the following ports:
- <channel-definition id="my-rtmp"> increment 2038 to 2039 or higher depending on the amount of webapps defined in your site root.
- <channel-definition id="my-nio-amf"> increment 2880 to 2881 or higher depending....
- <channel-definition id="my-nio-amf-poll"> increment 2880 to 2881 or higher depending....
- <channel-definition id="my-nio-amf-http"> increment 2880 to 2881 or higher depending....
Step 8
What is DataServices without Data?
Depending on your database server, setup the data sources properly. To do this, you can copy the file /lcds/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/lcds.xml to /lcds/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/MySuperCoolWebSite.xml. Please note that the name of the file must match the name of your web root folder created in Step 5. Add your connection string to the file, in the form:
<Resource name="jdbc/DATASOURCENAME" auth="Container"
type="javax.sql.DataSource" username="USERNAME" password="PASSWORD"
driverClassName="com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver"
url="jdbc:sqlserver://DATABASESERVERURL;DatabaseName=DBNAME;SelectMethod=cursor;"
maxActive="8"
/>
Step 9
So many steps, can we just go already?
YES, If all of the steps above were followed to a Tee, and you properly set all of your variables, you may now startup your services and access your LCDS server from Flash Builder 4. To do this execute the following files:
- If you want to use the internal database: /lcds/sampledb/startdb. (sh or bat depending on unix or windows)
- LiveCycle DataServices: /lcds/tomcat/bin/startup. (sh or bat as described above)
Step 10
Drag and Drop
That is right, with the Flash 4 modeler you can get away with just doing this and dragging and dropping your tables. I will not be explaining all of that in this entry, but possibly soon...
Step 11
Realization
Realize that at some point you should have documented this process as you found you are trying to remember all of these steps over and over again. Thus describes the existence of this page. Phew, I sure hope they don't change anything, oh wait it is Adobe, you should probably bookmark this page to keep track of my updates.
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