Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows

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About ReleaseBuilder

 

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During staging of follow-on releases of IBM^® WebSphere^® Portal Express portals, configurations, and artifacts need to be moved between systems.

ReleaseBuilder (releasebuilder.sh) enables management of release configurations independent of user configurations.

Release configuration data can be exported into an XML configuration interface configuration file. During staging of follow-on releases it is now possible to stage release configurations between two releases using the XML configuration interface.

This allows 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.sh command files reside in...

portal_server_root/bin

...and has the following syntax:

• NAME

  • releasebuilder.sh - generate different configurations for a single staging server, which will be consumed by a production server

• SYNOPSIS

  • releasebuilder -inOld input file oldReleaseConfiguration -inNew input file newReleaseConfiguration -out output file

• OPTIONS The following options are supported:

  • inOld input file oldReleaseConfiguration

    Required.

    This option is used to 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.

    This option is used to 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

    This option is used to 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;

• Linux:

  ./releasebuilder.sh -inOld stagingserverREV1_config.xml 
                      -inNew stagingserverREV2_config.xml 
                      -out outputfile.xml
  

• i5/OS:

  releasebuilder.sh -inOld stagingserverREV1_config.xml 
                    -inNew stagingserverREV2_config.xml 
                    -out outputfile.xml
  

• Windows:

   
  releasebuilder.bat -inOld stagingserverREV1_config.xml 
                     -inNew stagingserverREV2_config.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 Express installation along with the XML configuration interface. It can be run on the production server, although doing so impacts performance of WebSphere Portal Express

• 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 Express is installed

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

 

Parent topic:

Staging to production

 

Related concepts
Overview of staging the portal to production

 

Related tasks
Building a Release

 

Related reference

Manual steps prior to using ReleaseBuilder

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