Setup For uPortal 101 Seminar

Owned by SusanBramhall
Last updated: Jun 01, 2006Version comment

An element of the uP101 pre-conference seminar

This page is not intended to be a general documentation of uPortal configuration. It is the specific ramblings that will be presented at the JA-SIG Vancouver uPortal 101 pre-conference seminar.

Complete this section before the seminar to actively run examples.

A java IDE is useful but not necessary to working with uPortal. This seminar will use Eclipse. To participate in the walk through actively and most easily we recommend that you bring a laptop with wireless network capability and install the following software before you arrive. If you cannot do this, you can still get the most out of the seminar by browsing the materials available in the JA-SIG repository at.  The conference meeting rooms will have good wireless service.  We will have CDs available with an Eclipse workspace with uPortal project checked out from CVS.  This will be the basis of the examples presented.  

The list below includes the steps to complete if you want to run the examples and exercises. Warning, this is not a cookbook!

  1. Download JDK 5.0 Update 6 or 7 from Sun and install http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp or Java 2 SE 5.0 from Apple for OS X.
  2. Download and install Eclipse 3.1.2 from http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.1.2-200601181600/index.php.
  3. Add sysdeo Tomcat plug in by grabbing the zip file at http://www.sysdeo.com/sysdeo/content/download/393/4930/file/tomcatPluginV31.zip and expanding into the eclipse/plugins directory.
  4. Install Jakarta Tomcat 5.0.28 from the Jakarta site at http://tomcat.apache.org/download-55.cgi#5.0.28
  5. Launch Eclipse
    1. Go to window>preferences>Java>Installed JREs and add the jdk you installed.
    2. Go to window>preferences>Tomcat and select Version 5.x and set Tomcat home to the location where you installed Tomcat.
  6. Download and expand HSQLDB http://hsqldb.org/
  7. To make browsing xml in Eclipse easy download and install a trial version of the Oxygen XML Eclipse plug-in from http://www.oxygenxml.com/register.html  The instructions for installing the Eclipse plug-in are at http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html#eclipse3.1_instructions.

To check that you have set up successfully:

  1. If you succeeded with the oXygen plugin you can open Window>Preferences>Open Perspective>other... and see oXygen tools for working on XML and XSL.
  2. If Tomcat is properly installed you should see 3 icons in the menu bar to start tomcat, stop tomcat and restart.  And you can even start tomcat and go to http://localhost:8080 and see its welcome page.
  3. To test hsqldb, go to the directory hsqldb/demo and use the runServer.bat or runServer.sh command to start it up and the runManager to look at their test database.

The entire project and examples will be available to be browsed in JA-SIG CVS repository http://developer.ja-sig.org/source/viewrep/~br=up101-vancouver/jasig. In fact it is there under development now.

You will be able to use the Eclipse project created for the seminar.

Establish JA-SIG Credentials

We'll use JA-SIG's CAS server during the presentation, and a JA-SIG Jira account is a useful thing to have anyway. Create an account if you don't already have one on Jira, and then verify that you can log in to JA-SIG CAS.