Hello,
I am trying to implement Liferay for a corporate site.
The biggest problem is, that in every new version of Liferay, there are new bugs that broke my deployment scenario.
I read that "Liferay supports over 700 deployment configurations.", but I think that maybe 4-5 configurations are tested; 100-200 work "most of the time", and the rest - nobody knows.
For example, my deployment configuration is: Linux + SUN JSAS 9.1 + Oracle XE. Quite common, You may say.
With current version of Liferay (I am using GF Bundle), mailing is not working by default (it was working with older versions). I found some workarounds in this forum, but they do not work in my case.
Today I tried to delete an user, and I saw an ugly Exception:
ERROR [HibernateUtil:210] org.hibernate.exception.SQLGrammarException: could not execute query
org.hibernate.exception.SQLGrammarException: could not execute query

The bad news (to me) are, that these are all functions, that work in the past; and now I really have doubts if I shell use Liferay for production-use corporate site. Or I shall wait some day to have a simple and working out-of-the-box portal.

Have you configured the JDBC connection pools and Mail resources correctly?
Do you have the right JDBC driver installed for glassfish?
Did you drop the database and recreate it in Oracle to make sure that your database does not contain old data?
Having old data from a previous install can sometimes cause the issue you are observing.

If you found consistently reproducible bugs in the Liferay bits please file LEP at http://support.liferay.com

_raju

Hello!
Thank You for trying to help!
During long period of time I've tested several versions of Liferay, Glassfish etc...
I was not 100% correct - maybe these are not exactly "bugs", mostly "oddities". For example with Mail resource, after 1-2 hours reading forums and testing, I make it work. The problem is that this is far from "plug-and-play", as it was in earlier version.
Is there a "right JDBC driver installed for glassfish" (?) I've tried with several JDBC drivers, downloaded from oracle site. But You mention it, so I'll make a deeper research about this.
Of course, my data is from old version, but with every new release of Liferay, I am upgrading to newer version, without dropping it.. I think, this is what I read in wiki - upgrading only GF+LR bundle. Can You recommend me which is the best way to upgrade? I think that new version updates DB on first run(?)

I have old troubles with message board (http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/126679). I recreated all my DataBase (I'm lucky it's not big) for one of versions of Liferay, but the problem is still existing. I have a workaround for it, but it's very annoying. I can recreate my db again for latest version, but I'm not sure this will help.

I tested 5.0.1 version with clean (sql-minimal) database, and the problem with deleting users is there (only with Oracle XE). I've downloaded version 4.4.2, and it is ok - so, that was the reason for my previous post.
To post it as bug? Hm-m, we have 5-th version of 8-years old software and I can't delete a user? I am still thinking that I should be wrong.

Another facts:
-in one of versions, there were broken non-ansi characters in portlet's titles. (as You may noticed, English is not my native Language). This was fixed quickly, but You may imagine my face when I saw my home page after "upgrade". The problem was discussed here, and as I remember, it broke even liferay.com non-English pages.
-I am waiting for version 5.0.2, because of bug http://support.liferay.com/browse/LEP-2926. I really don't have nerves to download and test all versions of Liferay, but I'm 99% sure, that this was fixed in one of older versions, and after that appeared again (I am checking my logs frequently, so I remember this).

All these problems make me doubt about quality of Liferay as a good platform - I don't need 5000 portlets and themes, I think several "core" features are really important and should work flawlessly - Content management (Journal), Users, Groups, Communities, good Admin module, JSR-168 compability, Document/Image libraries, Message board (come on, there are very good PHP-based forums, this can be done as Java portlet); security options. I think in most use-cases that is all that people use from Liferay.

I agree with you that there are some pains in constantly adapting to a quickly evolving product like Liferay.

From what I have observed, Liferay is tested extensively with MySQL as the DB because thats what most Liferay developers and other users on the forums use. So you are better served by using MySQL to avoid common oddities you have seen with Oracle XE.

That said I am sure the community will welcome any contributions to make Liferay work better on Oracle XE. One such contribution can be a detailed bug report.

The second reason to use MySQL it is because Sun is investing resources into making Liferay + Glassfish + MySQL a successful stack.
There might be other business reasons that prevent you from making the above change but that was just a suggestion.

thanks,
_raju

Unfortunately, migrating to MySQL is not a good option to me. We have several EJB3-applications, based on Linux+GF+Oracle XE+TopLink, and I must say that we are quite happy with this stack. I want to integrate Liferay and our site with it using a single DB, because it's more convenient (from administration and backup point of view).
After Liferay 5.0.2 is released. I'll make a clean install and I'll post reproducible bug reports (if I find any).
Best Regards!