a quick way to test OpenClinica 3.3
For those of us who want to test release 3.3 before installing it, here is a quick way to do just that.
What we'll do is:
- rename the war to oc33.war
- let tomcat deploy it
- create a new, empty database oc33
- make a backup of our existing 3.1.2, 3.1.3, 3.1.4 or 3.2 database
- restore that as oc33
- copy the directory openclinica.data
- modify datainfo.properties
- start oc33
start with the war
Start with downloading the zip with the war and then unzip it and rename the war to oc33.war. Once you've done that, copy the war to tomcat/webapps. Tomcat will start deploying it, but it will not be able to start it, because there is no corresponding database. If tomcat does not deploy the war automatically, check with ls -al if tomcat is the owner and if not, issue chown tomcat:tomcat oc33.war
copying the database
We assume that you will want a copy of your existing database and the way to do that is making a new, empty database. Then making a dump of your production database and restoring that to the new one.
sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/psql
create database oc33 with encoding='UTF-8' owner=clinica;
\l
\q
sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/pg_dump openclinica > pg_dump_openclinica_20140624
sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/psql oc33 < pg_dump_openclinica_20140624
(The \l is to check if the creation of the database was successful and the \q to quit psql.)
don't forget the data
Now before we start we must copy the data-directories and we do that with:
cd /usr/local/tomcat
sudo -u tomcat cp -r openclinica.data oc33.data
datainfo.properties anyone?
If you like you can go through datainfo.properties, to edit it to your favorite settings. But the defaults work.
start oc33
As a last step, go to tomcat's manager/html and start oc33.
what to look for?
On https://docs.openclinica.com/release-notes/openclinica-3.3 you can find a summary of what's new in this release.
The new EventAction is something many users looked forward to, because it gives you the option to schedule Events automatically. Another thing is the use of tokens, mainly to create links to other systems in an easy way.
If you can life without that, you might as well stick to version 3.2
one last thing
After you've evaluated version 3.3 and decided that indeed you want to upgrade, make a backup first! Do it for example as described here and when you've done that, store the files on another server and a tape and burn them on CD. Well, you get the picture.
Other how-to-pages can be found here.
this page was last reviewed June 2014