Chapter 17. Deployment on an External Database (RDBMS)

Table of Contents

Overview
Why use an external RDBMS?
Supported Databases
Upsizing to an External RDBMS
Step 1 - Stop the PaperCut NG application
Step 2 - Perform a backup of the existing data
Step 3 - Create a new database in the external RDBMS
Step 4 - Change the PaperCut NG connection details
Step 5 - Initialize the new database
Step 6 - Load the data into the new database
Step 7 - Restart the PaperCut NG application server
Database specific configuration
Configuring Microsoft SQL Express
Configuring Oracle (and Oracle Express Edition)

Overview

This section describes the process of running PaperCut NG on an external relational database, and describes why an organization would choose to do this. By default PaperCut NG uses an internal database product known as Apache Derby. This database engine was donated to Apache by IBM and was previously known as IBM Cloudscape.

Why use an external RDBMS?

The internal PaperCut NG database is stable, scalable, self-maintaining and provides very good performance. For this reason most organizations do not need to run PaperCut NG on an external database system. However there are some good reasons to run PaperCut NG on an external RDBMS, including:

  • Your organization has existing database infrastructure and would like to consolidate all applications on the same database platform.

  • Your organization has an existing database maintenance and backup procedure and would like PaperCut NG to take advantage of this.

  • People would like to use 3rd party reporting and analysis tools (like Crystal Reports) to view and analyze the PaperCut NG database.

  • Your organization is very large and requires the performance benefits of a dedicated RDBMS. This also allows the database to reside on a separate server to PaperCut NG, which improves the system scalability.

Supported Databases

PaperCut Software International Pty Ltd supports the following two external databases out-of-the-box:

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005/2008

  • Microsoft SQL Express 2005/2008 (free from Microsoft)

  • PostgreSQL 7.1+ (the free open source database).

  • Oracle 9.2+ (requires an optional support module. Please contact PaperCut Software International Pty Ltd for details).

These databases were chosen to cater for the majority of our customers. Most customers have existing SQL Server licenses so can take advantage of this support. PostgreSQL was chosen as the second alternative RDBMS because it is free, open-source and supported on all common platforms.