Hi, 1 of my clients is interested to try on Liferay but they already have Tomcat in their server serving some simple web application. Are there articles which tell me how to deploy Liferay onto a standard and stand alone Tomcat?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Adam,

Take a look at the Liferay Portal Administrator's Guide in the Documentation section of the web site. You'll have to look under the 5.1 documentation, as the 5.2 documentation won't be released until 5.2 moves to EE status. There are also threads in the forum that discuss this topic.

You're looking for the "Installing Liferay for an Enterprise" chapter in the administrators guide. As Jeffrey stated, this is currently for 5.1 and you possibly need to take some changes for 5.2 into account.

I personally have reverted to installing a bundle on the same machine where a tomcat installation existed, changed the ports so that both didn't conflict and then hardened the bundle as I expect upgrades to be much smoother this way. As I'm hiding tomcat behind apache using mod_jk, this is not visible to the outside. This configuration does cost an additional chunk of memory, but for me it's worth that: Now way upgrading liferay doesn't cause outages of all the other applications hosted on the same tomcat instance and vice versa. I'm happy with this configuration and it's really smooth compared with a *.war installation.

Notice upfront: I've tried to choose every single word with care. The following article is meant to be positively constructive. If it somehow doesn't seem so, keep in mind that english is not my first language and diplomacy is quite difficult this way...



offtopic for this thread, but... Is this really the reason for the non-availability?

As an EE customer (which I'm not) I'd be unhappy about documentation bugs which could have been caught during the non-EE time, when loads of SE-users deployed liferay and made it ready for EE.

As SE user this challenges my positive support of EE because previously Liferay Inc promised to support the community in just the same way as prior to the EE version. I'd understand the "waiting for EE" as a bit of a challenge to that promise.

Not to be understood wrong: Liferay Inc. has all rights (legally and morally) to sell EE and for the small patches that I've provided I've happily and voluntarily signed over all copyrights to them. This doesn't change at all!
My issue is about the promise to continue to value and support the Open Source community when EE was first announced. "Waiting for the EE-status" for the release of the administrative documentation is - purely for this reason - among the worst possible rationales.

I don't know much about the process in which the documentation is written, but if it were more open, we all could

• contribute missing/changed documentation (more structured than in the Wiki or Forums)
• contribute bugfixes
• provide feedback
• already use the parts that have been finished

... even if parts of the book are still "draft" or "requiring attention".

Hope to have triggered some (positive) thoughts,
Olaf

Hi Olaf,

We definitely appreciate constructive feedback from the community. When I mentioned that the documentation release would coincide with the move to EE status, it is really a matter of availability. Because of the magnitude of change (introduction of the Control Panel), this version of documentation has required an extensive revision and is still being finalized.

As for opening up the documentation process, I've passed a link to this thread to our knowledge manager, Rich Sezov and asked if he could comment.

Thanks for your continued support of LIferay.

Wow - that was quick... Thanks for answering and the clarification. This sounds a lot better than the previous note.
I'm looking forward for Rich's comment.

Actually, yes and no. In the past (since version 4.3), the official documentation has lagged behind releases of Liferay, when Liferay was only a single product. The reason for that is that the documentation has been playing catch-up with the code since about 2007 or so. For example, if you look at the releases of the versions, the first edition of the Admin Guide was released in March of 2008, and it was based on Liferay 4.3. After that, Liferay went through very rapid changes through version 4.4.x, 5.0.x, and 5.1.x in only a few months. The next version of the Admin Guide was released in September of 2008, based on Liferay 5.1.x. In the book publishing world, that is an incredible turnaround. You don't generally have two editions of a book within a single year.

One of the reasons we made the decision to release the documentation with the EE releases was simply to allow for enough time to continue catching up the documentation with the code. We not only have an Admin Guide in the works; we also have a Developer's Guide being prepared as well. The end goal is to provide a complete set of documentation for Liferay which stays up to date with the code. Under our current constraints (i.e., one person to work on all of this: me, and my time is divided between documentation and training), it's going to take some releases before we're all caught up and can move on to maintaining the documentation.



That's another reason we made the decision to wait on the official documentation until the EE version: to shake certain things out and make them work properly. I'll give you one example: the new way of connecting Liferay to databases through the portal-ext.properties file. This changed drastically between 5.2.0 and 5.2.2, mainly due to needing to get the feature to the point where it could be used by regular system administrators. If I had documented the feature the way it was originally implemented, the Admin Guide would have told people to extract Spring configuration files from .jar files, modify them, and put them back: hardly an "Enterprise" way of doing things, and not really supportable on all application servers.



Perhaps it was an unfortunate choice of words. We are not "waiting" to release the documentation. I can see where that statement might make you think that we have the book done, but are sitting on it so we can give it to just the EE folks. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have actually been working on it all day: it's still in process, and my deadline for getting it done coincides with the EE release of Liferay. Similarly, the 4.3 documentation didn't arrive till near the end of the 4.3 release cycle, and the 5.1 documentation didn't arrive with 5.1.0. Now that we have EE, though, we can set harder deadlines on getting the docs done, which works out better for everybody.



We do continue to value and support the community as much as we ever have, and perhaps even more than you realize at this point. Let me respond to your list below:



Regarding #1: as you know, we currently have the wiki for that. Combining that with your other points, however, we do have a plan in place for enabling collaboration on the official documentation as well. I'm not sure if you know about it, but we have a new Knowledgebase Portlet that is currently in development. It currently exists only in the code repository as it has not yet been completed, but this portlet will allow us to export the documentation to the web site and allow others to add and collaborate on it in a more structured way than the wiki. The portlet is not quite complete yet, so we haven't yet been able to roll it out. But yes, this is in direct response to the need to provide draft Official documentation with the SE releases so that everything can be collaborated on just as easily as submissions can be made to the code.



You have, and please, rest assured that we value the community and your support of Liferay. I know this firsthand, having been a member of the community before becoming an employee. Thanks for your constructive comments and please, keep them coming. It's the only way we will be able to properly respond to the needs of everyone who uses Liferay.

Thanks!

--Rich

Sorry for late responding :p

Thanks for the pointing up Jeffrey Handa. I am reading right now



Thanks for telling me something important on using mod_jk. May I ask why do we need to hide tomcat behind apache? Are there any benefit and how much the memory will cost? I'm asking stand alone because most of my clients are using simple web application which is implemented by me in tomcat. Besides, when I startup.bat the Liferay 5.2, I see a message said "... apache native library ... not found ... which has optimized ... in production environment ..." and I haven't start the windows service for liferay successfully since days ago by using the service.bat, configured by using tomcat5w.exe and start the service from the service manager.

Will anyone tell me in advance that the separation between tomcat and liferay is possible and what is the disadvantages doing this way? Thanks.



Mr. Rich, I'm actually thinking like Olaf too before reading his thread because I see 5.1.4 is EE commercial version but I have no way to get 5.1.4 SE version. The only choice is 5.2.2 and I am having alot of problem while working with this fresh version which makes me think I am the white rat and eventually my clients are white rats and it make me thinking that I am risking my career in long term.

-------

Thanks for helping up ^^ guys.

On all levels: Thank you for this statement. I now fully understand the reasoning (not that it is necessary and see how I interpreted Jeffreys statement differently from what was meant to be said.

I have stated, that my positive bias towards EE has been challenged. With your and Jeffreys (very quick and) thorough answers this is more than reverted. I'm really happy to hear about this extreme level of commitment towards me as nonpaying customer (well, not-yet-paying, who knows ;-)

I'm happy to hear that the documentation process will be opened more. The wiki is nice for some references, but severely lacks (searchable) attributes like "applies to 5.1" or "has been changed in 5.2". Having "the draft administration manual for 5.2" would make it so much easier, even if the first step would be to mark 40% of the content as outdated. This would be a reference for 5.2 with some undocumented parts, but they would be explicitly undocumented. You'd be able to delete invalid information that has been valid in 4.x or 5.1.

I'm actually fine with the whole EE release, even if that means that I have to patch some bugs in 5.1.2 myself (which I've done, Jira is still accessible). My argument was about the promise to strongly support SE (the MIT-licensed version) which conflicted with providing the documentation only when EE was available. Rich's answer shows how and why that is not the correct interpretation of Jeffreys post.

For your career you have to balance the license cost vs. the criticality of support, bug fixes and your time. Using 0$ products causes more accountability on you. There are multiple levels of EE where you can load off some/many of your accountability to Liferay Inc. (or, for that matter, to Sun if you like what they deliver with Liferay Portal - can't remember their name). If your career is at risk you might at least think about trading some money and choose the EE version. I'd expect minor-level upgrades to be a lot easier than depending on the latest Open Source version where only the last major version is supported with bugfixes.

I have been and will be completely fine with this trade off between license cost and accountability.

First of all. Let me explain what is my career. I am an open source small guy who loves the way open source drives. Besides freedom on source code viewing and avoiding vendor lock down. I enjoy the start 0$ and pay as progress process. Mostly, I am not the one who consume the implemented products, but my clients are. Would you imagine how much they need to spend in order to start some proprietary software such as Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and else? Those closed and hyper expensive software is my past career and I ever implemented those solution few hundreds thousand $(my country currency) before. So, to clearly mention to you that I, never expect to $0 solution to my clients. I have used in combination or stand alone really alot of open source tools or software or even web application to my clients. At the end, they mostly still need to pay but instead of me, they donate, pay and contribute back to the open source Team. After Stability Stage on any project, I do can employ more support people to service and maintain their system but are they more expert than the team who develop the system? And the amount they paid to me is almost the same they are going to pay for sign-up service to the system developer team or company. So, at the end, my clients paid me to start and implementing and to the developer team for long term servicing. This is my career. I think most so called open source guy does like me. Am I?

$0 sounds like insult to me. I found Liferay accidentally while I explore the possibilities in ICEfaces. Default bundle is running slow, taking lots of memory, hard to start, impossible to start as windows services, even hard to shutdown. Some portlets did not function as expected, screen, developing interface, and lots of issues which prevent me to have a start with 1 of my clients. Yeah, I do agreed that EE is good to everyone, but the so called most harden and stable release I can't get it. This is 1 of the reason that I drop MySQL too and straightly direct all my next-clients to PostgreSQL and eventually under my advice after their system start to massive growth, they subscribe to EnterpriseDB. This happened so many time in my life. From Drupal to Acquia, from Flash to FlashDevelop, from joomla to subscribed joomla services.

I am happy to see Liferay has so many tools, portlets, functions, features, but so far I have really bad experience to start with the latest bundle which is not EE status, and if 5.2.2 is EE status in the future, I can't get 5.2.2 SE but only through 5.2.2 EE. That mean I will never have a nice to start and stable web application to make my customer happy first and pay later.

I am still remember 3 years ago, I asked certain performance question to MySQL sales person, they said it is in Enterprise Edition not Community or Developer edition. Need to pay to get a nice performance .exe which make my clients unhappy? no way. I "dump" it directly and since then went for PostgreSQL until now. And yes, PostgreSQL are not that fast compared to MySQL that time, but I can get different version and it is always the best I can download. I know it because I have experienced with implementation on thousands of people online web application.

Need me to pay for EE release just to ensure it is the best for my future-next-solution or clients and I haven't truly feel the stability of SE version. It is like I can try the car, but only for sitting in it, and only after paid, I can start to try drive the car = =

Hey Adam,

Thanks for your comments. Here's the difference: Liferay is, first and foremost, an open source project. That means you can always grab the latest code and build it yourself. If you take a look at our code repository, you will see that we have a 5.1.x branch. That is where the current EE version resides. There is nothing preventing you from going out to the repository, checking out the latest, most stable code, building it yourself, and then creating a product out of it for your clients.

Now, certain revisions of that branch are the versions we are calling our Enterprise Edition. Naturally, we don't publish which revisions they are, or nobody would pay for the EE version, and I wouldn't have a job. :-) But for those who use Liferay as a basis for their own products (and don't mind getting their hands dirty with the code), the code repository is as open as it has ever been, and it will stay that way.

EE is a productizing / packaging effort for customers who want a supported product. Its foundation is the open source code which has been and will continue to be available.

Hope this helps!

--Rich

Adam,
my apologies if I insulted you. First I though we were of different opinions, upon reading your post for a fourth time I don't believe this any longer.

What you wrote about the MySql Enterprise availability will hopefully never happen with Liferay, at least not based on the promise I've used as basis for my rant above. Liferay Inc's stated commitment was about always fixing bugs in the latest SE version, with additional backports of the fixes to the previously released EE versions should they exist there.
Therefor we are able to get fixes, albeit for the price of getting simultaneously added new features which might have introduced new bugs. The SE form is how Liferay Portal, up to 5.1.2, has always (and only) been available. (Maybe backports have existed earlier, but at least they were less prominently promoted)
I've not yet run into a bug that existed in 5.1.x and 5.2.x but has only been fixed in the 5.1 EE branch.

Liferay Portal is definitely not perfect (in terms of bug-free-ness), but I sense a very different approach to the whole EE thing here compared to many other companies building on OpenSource products (and certainly different to closed source companies). Maybe it's my personal perception, but I don't believe that "white rats" adequately describes the relationship between Liferay Inc and the SE users. In fact, I'm about to use Jeffrey's and Rich's immediate answers above as a prime example for how to handle customers complaints, even if those customers have not paid a single Euro (in my case) for the license.
I hope that they have not won one strong supporter (me) for the price of loosing one (you).

And: Sorry again for the oversimplification of a career to the 0$ price tag.

Mr. Rich, though I'm still painfully trying out everything (I hope it can be as fast as possible cause some customer are really excited about Lferay and I need to prepare some preparation next week), to be honest with you, once it is deployed at customer side and if Liferay truly boost their effectiveness and productivity, I will sure advice them to set aside a budget for your team. This is fact in my open source career because developer team are always the one who knows inside out. By the way, I like the way new features are sponsored thing. That is different method that I see from the past.

Thanks for the explanation.



I am sorry too for the "white rats" things

Thanks for the explanation.

Wow. I've seen the branch, I've seen commits on that branch. But I somehow have not made the connection that the 5.1.x branch is where the 5.1.x versions, i.e. EE, are created from. There's an idiom in german about not being able to see the forest because of all the trees, which correctly describes how I feel about it.

Thanks for opening my eyes. This by far exceeds the expectation I had after the promise to stay open despite of the EE version.