Alfresco with Websphere?

[fouellet]

The spec sheets now indicate WebSphere and Weblogic as supported application servers in addition to Tomcat and JBoss.
Any information on how/when the Alfresco distribution will allow to use these?
:roll:

Thanks.

[gavinc]

WebSphere and WebLogic are both commercial products so we can't create a distribution containing these.

However, the WAR file distribution can be used to deploy to either of these application servers. All you will need to do is add the MySQL connector to the appserver's classpath and copy the WAR file to the appropriate location.

[fhartojo]

I wasn't able to run v1.0 on Websphere 5.1.2.  I could deploy it, but it failed to run.  There really was very precious little clues in the log files other than a mention that the webapp failed to initialise due to a previous error.

That said, I'm also unable to run it under Tomcat 5.0.28 and JDK 1.4.2_10 with a more consistent error which I noticed also appeared once under WAS:

2005-11-28 18:07:16 StandardContext[/alfresco]Error configuring application listener of class org.alfresco.web.app.ContextListener
java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/alfresco/web/app/ContextListener (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass0(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:539)
        at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:123)
        at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.findClassInternal(WebappClassLoader.java:1634)
        at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.findClass(WebappClassLoader.java:860)
        at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1307)
        at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1189)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3775)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4343)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:823)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:807)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:595)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostDeployer.install(StandardHostDeployer.java:277)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.install(StandardHost.java:832)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:625)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:431)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:983)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:349)
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1091)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:789)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1083)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:478)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:480)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:2313)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:556)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:287)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:425)

Does this mean I need JDK 1.5 to run the out-of-the-box WAR file?  Because the only times I'm able to run it is on Tomcat 5.5.12 with JDK 1.5.

Thanks.

[gavinc]

Hi,

Yes, Alfresco does require JDK 1.5 and the error you saw is consistent with using the wrong JDK version.

If you can configure WebSphere/WebLogic to run with Java 1.5 then there's no reason why Alfresco shouldn't deploy and run just fine.

[fhartojo]

Hi,

Yes, Alfresco does require JDK 1.5 and the error you saw is consistent with using the wrong JDK version.

If you can configure WebSphere/WebLogic to run with Java 1.5 then there's no reason why Alfresco shouldn't deploy and run just fine.

Thanks for the quick response.

Unfortunately, I can't (easily) sub JDK 1.5 for the stock JDK 1.4.  IBM have some custom additions that I've no idea how to replicate.  Documents/articles/postings I've been able to find all suggest to upgrade to the WAS version that uses the desired version of the JDK.  Which we're not looking to do either.  

I'll see about setting up a build environment to rebuild the app.  Is it possible to recompile it using JDK 1.4?  Does it use any 1.5-specific features?

Thanks again.

[gavinc]

Yes we do use specific 1.5 features such as generics, the enhanced for loop and enums.

So unfortunately it looks like an upgrade of WebSphere would be required 

[fhartojo]

Looks like I'm out of luck with Websphere.  Even WAS v6, the latest version, uses JDK 1.4.

[drobert_bfm]

Simple Answer:

Don't hold your breath. IBM still hasn't released a 1.5 JDK, and since they insist on tying WebSphere to their broken JDK, they're not likely to make WebSphere java5 compatible any time soon. It took them quite some time to simply bring it up to J2EE 1.4 level (WAS6).

You have two possible solutions:

1. Try to make it run under the "new" WebSphere community edition; since it's based on the Geronimo kernel (it's essentially the Gluecode server in a new dress), there's a good chance Alfresco will run on it. Just make sure that you're running a 1.5 JVM.

2. Leave the total-j2ee stack behind, and run Alfresco in a simple servlet container, e.g. Tomcat or Jetty, and use the standard APIs to connect to it from your WebSphere based apps.

[onlaed]

IS there a guide for installing alfresco on WebSphere community edition?

[kevinr]

We need to work out the issue with IBM JDK1.5 before Alfresco will work on WebSphere 6.

Thanks,

Kevin