About ReleaseBuilder

 

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During staging of follow-on releases of IBM WebSphere Portal...

...need to be moved between systems.

ReleaseBuilder enables management of release configurations independent of user configurations.

Release configuration data can be exported into an XML configuration interface configuration file.

Staging of follow-on releases between two releases can be accomplished using the XML configuration interface, allowing you to track which configuration entities were removed, added or changed compared to the previous release, and apply differential updates.

Differential updates are created by detecting the differences between one configuration and another. A third configuration can then be generated to represent the difference and used to apply not only addition and update modifications, but also deletions to the production server. This allows the staging and production servers to remain in synch and eliminates the problem of configuration bloat on the production server.

ReleaseBuilder is a configuration management tool. It should not be used for migration purposes.

 

Performance benefits

Massively parallel portal configuration tasks; for example, hundreds of administrators working in parallel; which could impact the user experience and portal performance, can be distributed to independent portal systems. ReleaseBuilder together with the XML configuration interface allows integration of the resulting configurations.

 

ReleaseBuilder synopsis

The ReleaseBuilder command files reside in portal_server_root/bin and have the following syntax:

    releasebuilder -inOld oldReleaseConfiguration 
                   -inNew newReleaseConfiguration 
                   -out output file 

The following options are supported:

  • -inOld input file oldReleaseConfiguration

    Required.

    Specify the first of the two XML configuration files to compare. The input file oldReleaseConfiguration parameter must be an absolute or relative path of an accessible XML configuration file previously generated using the XML configuration interface command.

  • -inNew input file newReleaseConfiguration

    Required.

    Specify the second of the two XML configuration files to compare. The input file newReleaseConfiguration parameter must be an absolute or relative path of an accessible XML configuration file previously generated using the XML configuration interface command.

  • -out output file

    Specify the file in which the differential output should be written. If not specified, the differential output will be written to the System console. The output file parameter must be an absolute or relative path of an accessible XML configuration file. The file does not need to exist. If it does not exist, it will be created. If it does exist, the existing information in the file will be overwritten.

Examples

To generate the differences file containing the additions and subtractions configuration file, enter;

  • UNIX:

    ./releasebuilder.sh -inOld StageRev1.xml -inNew StageRev2.xml -out outputfile.xml

  • i5/OS:

    releasebuilder.sh -inOld StageRev1.xml -inNew StageRev2.xml -out outputfile.xml

  • Windows:

    releasebuilder.bat -inOld StageRev1.xml -inNew StageRev2.xml -out outputfile.xml

The resulting output configuration file will contain the additions and deletions to be imported onto the production portal server.

 

Usage Notes:

  • ReleaseBuilder is installed during WebSphere Portal installation along with the XML configuration interface. It can be run on the production server, although doing so impacts performance of WebSphere Portal

  • Unlike the XML configuration interface, ReleaseBuilder does not interact with the portal server runtime. IBM recommends that ReleaseBuilder be run on a separate, standalone machine. This system can be the staging system, or a completely separate system on which WebSphere Portal is installed

  • To maximize use of system resources, WebSphere Portal should not be running during ReleaseBuilder execution.

 

Parent topic:

Stage to production

 

Related concepts

Overview of staging portal to production

 

Related tasks

Build a Release

 

Related reference:

Manual steps prior to using ReleaseBuilder