Maybe you are following @bonitasoft on Twitter, and so you may already know: we will demonstrate Bonita BPM 6 (please, notice the new name) at Solution Linux in Paris next week!

Of course, we know that not all our community members can attend as you are all over the world. Stay tuned – we’ll be putting events and webinars on the agenda for everyone, soon.

If you can’t wait, go to our Facebook page and tell us which Bonita BPM version 6.0 feature interests you most?

Just a small post to remind you that BonitaSoft is going to be at Solution Linux, May 28-29th 2103. We’ll be at booth “C21″.

We look forward to meeting you “in real life!” Let’s chat about BOS, our Community, ideas and questions you have, or whatever … you are welcome!

Part 1 began with the installation of Bonita Studio, and this post is about installing a basic production server. You will use:

• Ubuntu Desktop and Server 12.04 LTS,
• OpenJDK 6 ,
• PostgreSQL 9.1,
• Tomcat 6, and of course,
• the Open Source version of Bonita Open Solution (BOS) 5.10, all in 64 bits.

This tutorial is aimed for beginners, but you will need to have Ubuntu installed and have basic knowledge about using terminals.

Server

Installation of the Ubuntu Server

I used VirtualBox to install Ubuntu Server, with a bridged network configuration so it has its own IP address over the network. (Of course, feel free to install Ubuntu Server on some actual hardware.) Set “bonita” as the first user and “bpm” as the password. (Note that this is appropriate for the tutorial, but for production, you should of course use more secured credentials.) As said in the introduction, this will not cover the entire installation of Ubuntu Server. However, it is useful to show that during the installation, you can select some packages to be pre-installed. As you can see in the second screenshot below, you should select “OpenSSH server”, “LAMP Server”, “PostgreSQL database” and “Tomcat Java Server”.

When the installation is finished, I suggest you update all packages:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

If you let dhcp manage the IP address for you, retrieve the address of the server. It will be very useful to use SSH in a terminal, and then have control of the server from the desktop PC where you’ve already installed Bonita Studio:

sudo ifconfig

The system will ask for your password. Once you have your IP address, you can start a terminal on your desktop PC. Using SSH, you can remote control the server from the desktop PC, so you can do all steps of the tutorial with copy / paste, etc.

ssh bonita@192.168.0.209

Of course, change the IP address to that of your server. Then, provide the password (“bpm” for this tutorial) and confirm the creation of the key. You should get something like this:

PostgreSQL

If you selected PostgreSQL to be installed by Ubuntu Server, PostgreSQL 9.1 is installed and its default configuration is mostly good. You just need to install the PostgreSQL JDBC driver, to define the password of “postgre” PostgreSQL user, and define a user for BOS, so you can connect to the server and use databases.

sudo -u postgres psql postgres

You’ll get the Postgres prompt, like this:

postgres=#

Set a password for the “postgres” database role using the command:

\password postgres

Enter your password and confirm it. For the tutorial, use “bpm”. Then, create the bonita user.

CREATE ROLE bonita WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'bpm';

Now, create the two Bonita databases, “bonita_journal” and “bonita_history”, and grant privileges to the “bonita” user.

CREATE DATABASE bonita_history;

CREATE DATABASE bonita_journal;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE bonita_history TO bonita;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE bonita_journal TO bonita;

To quit the PostgreSQL shell:

\q

And press enter. You should be again on the remote system prompt. If your PostgreSQL server is not on the same system as the Tomcat server, or if you use a remote GUI like pgAdmin III to control PostgreSQL, you’ll need to modify two files of PostgreSQL configuration, so it can listen on the network: “pg_hba.conf” and “postgresql.conf”.

cd /etc/postgresql/9.1/main

sudo nano pg_hba.conf

At the end of the file, add these lines:

# Allow any user from host 192.168.12.10 to connect to all
# databases if the user's password is correctly supplied.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all                all             192.168.0.0/24          md5

To save and quit, “ctrl+x”, “y”, and enter. Then,

sudo nano postgresql.conf

Find the line starting with “#listen_addresses = ‘localhost’” and change it to:

listen_addresses = '*'

To save and quit, “ctrl+x”, “y”, and enter. Once this is done, the server must be restarted.

sudo service postgresql restart

If you want to have a GUI to control PostgreSQL on your desktop, you can install the package “pgadmin3″. You can use Synaptic, Software Center, aptitude or apt-get. The fastest at this point is to create a new tab in the already open terminal: “File / Open Tab” or “ctrl+shift+t”.

sudo apt-get install pgadmin3

You can now start pgAdmin III from the menu. Click on the plug button to create a new connection to a server, fill in the information requested and you are ready. If you go to “bonita_history” or “bonita_journal”, you should have 77 tables for both.

PostgreSQL is ready!

BOS Deploy

First step: download, unzip and copy the BOS bundle files to the “bonita” user home directory, in this case: “/home/bonita/”

cd ~/

wget -i -B http://download.forge.objectweb.org/bonita/BOS-5.10-deploy.zip

sudo apt-get install unzip

unzip -d bos_deploy BOS-5.10-deploy.zip

cd ~/bos_deploy/

“~/bos_deploy”, or “/home/bonita/bos_deploy” is your <BOS_DEPLOY> folder. Of course, you can put this directory elsewhere. Keep <BOS_DEPLOY> path for future reference on this tutorial, BOS forum, documentation and training. You now need to install the JDBC driver. The installer will install JDBC3 and JDBC4 files, and provide a few very useful links. The interesting link is “/usr/share/java/postgresql-jdbc4.jar”, which will always be related to the latest JBC4 version. Link it in “<BOS_DEPLOY>/bonita_execution_engine/engine/libs/”. This way, if PostgreSQL JDBC driver is updated by the system, you don’t have to update the link.

sudo apt-get install libpostgresql-jdbc-java

cd ~/bos_deploy/bonita_execution_engine/engine/libs/

ln -s /usr/share/java/postgresql-jdbc4.jar .

Before running the initDatabase.sh script to create BOS databases tables, edit two files: “bonita-history.properties” and “bonita-journal.properties”. They are in “<BOS_DEPLOY>/conf/bonita/server/default/conf”.

cd ~/bos_deploy/conf/bonita/server/default/conf

For both file, check that all lines in the header are commented out. Then, find the PostgreSQL section, uncomment those lines and fill databases login and password.

nano bonita-history.properties

To quit and save, “ctrl+x” then “y” and “enter”. Take care to not change the name of the file.

nano bonita-journal.properties

To quit and save, “ctrl+x” then “y” and “enter”. Take care to not change the name of the file. Below are the copy of the different sections. Both header are the same, and the PostgreSQL section is slightly different.

##################################
# Default database configuration #
##################################
# IMPORTANT: do not use those settings for production!
# By default Bonita uses a H2 database that will store all data in one file.
# Access to the database is done through a datasource configured in Tomcat configuration file: conf/context.xml

# H2 Hibernate dialect
#hibernate.dialect                        org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect

# Using an interceptor can change the database behaviour. By default, an interceptor is defined to order the result of queries by adding null values at the end.
#bonita.hibernate.interceptor             org.ow2.bonita.env.interceptor.H2DescNullFirstInterceptor

# Table are automatically create in database
#hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto                   update

# Location of the datasource (define in Tomcat configuration file: conf/context.xml)
# hibernate.connection.datasource          java:/comp/env/bonita/default/journal

# Default database connection over H2 (not using datasources)
#hibernate.connection.driver_class        org.h2.Driver
#hibernate.connection.url                 jdbc:h2:file:${BONITA_HOME}/server/default/work/databases/bonita_journal.db;FILE_LOCK=NO;MVCC=TRUE;DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=TR$
#hibernate.connection.username            bonita
#hibernate.connection.password            bpm
#hibernate.default_schema                journal

##
# POSTGRESQL

hibernate.dialect                        org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
hibernate.connection.driver_class        org.postgresql.Driver
hibernate.connection.url                 jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/bonita_history
hibernate.connection.username            bonita
hibernate.connection.password            bpm

##
# POSTGRESQL

hibernate.dialect                        org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
hibernate.connection.driver_class        org.postgresql.Driver
hibernate.connection.url                 jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/bonita_journal
hibernate.connection.username            bonita
hibernate.connection.password            bpm

Now that the configuration is done, you can run the initDatabase.sh script.

cd ~/bos_deploy/bonita_execution_engine/database

chmod +x initDatabase.sh

./initDatabase.sh

The script asks three questions:

• Which domain do you want to use (press enter without nothing to use default)? -> press enter (default)
• Where is your BONITA_HOME folder? -> <BOS_DEPLOY>/conf/bonita

/home/bonita/bos_deploy/conf/bonita

• Which hibernate configuration to use to generate database (press enter without nothing to use default)? Default is ‘hibernate-configuration:core hibernate-configuration:history’ to init both databases:  -> press enter (default)

The script will create the tables in “journal” and “history” databases. If you check the structure, you should see 77 tables in both databases.

BOS Configuration

In order to finish the configuration of BOS bundle, copy the “bonita” directory and “jaas-standard.cfg” in <BOS_DEPLOY> to “/opt” and set the rights for Tomcat. First, edit “jaas-standard.cfg”:

cd ~/bos_deploy/conf/external/security

sudo nano jaas-standard.cfg

Remove the lines

BonitaAuth-default {
  org.ow2.bonita.identity.auth.BonitaIdentityLoginModule required domain="default";
  org.ow2.bonita.identity.auth.LocalStorageLoginModule required domain="default";
};

BonitaStore-default {
  org.ow2.bonita.identity.auth.LocalStorageLoginModule required domain="default";
};

To save and quit, “ctrl+x”, then “y” and “enter”.  Now, copy all the files in “/opt” and set the rights:

cd /opt/

sudo mkdir bos_conf

sudo cp -r ~/bos_deploy/conf/bonita/ /opt/bos_conf/bonita/

sudo cp ~/bos_deploy/conf/external/security/jaas-standard.cfg /opt/bos_conf/

cd /opt/

sudo chown -R tomcat6:tomcat6 bos_conf

When you configure Tomcat, define the context for the Bonita web application. So now that you have created the databases tables, you can prepare “bonita-journal.properties” and “bonita-history.properties” for production. The aim is to comment again the PostgreSQL configuration, and instead, insert the lines of the future datasource configuration.

cd /opt/bos_conf/bonita/server/default/conf

sudo nano bonita-history.properties

To quit and save, “ctrl+x” then “y” and “enter”. Take care to not change the name of the file.

sudo nano bonita-journal.properties

To quit and save, “ctrl+x” then “y” and “enter”. Take care to not change the name of the file. Below is a copy of the different sections.

##
# POSTGRESQL

hibernate.dialect                        org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
#hibernate.connection.driver_class        org.postgresql.Driver
#hibernate.connection.url                 jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/bonita_history
#hibernate.connection.username            bonita
#hibernate.connection.password            bpm
hibernate.connection.datasource           java:/comp/env/bonita/default/history

##
# POSTGRESQL

hibernate.dialect                        org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
#hibernate.connection.driver_class        org.postgresql.Driver
#hibernate.connection.url                 jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/bonita_journal
#hibernate.connection.username            bonita
#hibernate.connection.password            bpm
hibernate.connection.datasource           java:/comp/env/bonita/default/journal

Tomcat

If you selected Tomcat to be installed by Ubuntu Server, Tomcat6 is installed and its default configuration is mostly good. Next, link the PostgreSQL JDBC driver to Tomcat lib.

cd /usr/share/tomcat6/lib

sudo ln -s /usr/share/java/postgresql-jdbc4.jar .

To set datasources, create a bonita.xml file with the context so the web application can access to the PostgreSLQ databases “bonita_journal” and “bonita_hystory”.

cd /etc/tomcat6/Catalina/localhost/

sudo nano bonita.xml

Then, paste the content below in the terminal with the middle button, or with “ctrl+shift+c”:

<Context path='/bonita'>

<Resource name='bonita/default/journal'
auth='Container'
type='javax.sql.DataSource'
username='bonita'
password='bpm'
driverClassName='org.postgresql.Driver'
url='jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/bonita_journal'
maxActive='20'
maxIdle='10'
maxWait='-1' />

<Resource name='bonita/default/history'
auth='Container'
type='javax.sql.DataSource'
username='bonita'
password='bpm'
driverClassName='org.postgresql.Driver'
url='jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/bonita_history'
maxActive='20'
maxIdle='10'
maxWait='-1' />

</Context>

To save and quit nano: press “ctrl+x”, then “y” to save, and “enter” to validate the name of the file (“bonita.xml”). If you undeploy a Bonita web application, this file will be deleted by Tomcat. So, save it in the the “bonita” user directory.

cp /etc/tomcat6/Catalina/localhost/bonita.xml ~/bonita.xml

To configure Bonita, system variables need to be defined. To do that, edit “/etc/default/tomcat6″. This way, every time Tomcat6 restarts, it will use the correct information.

sudo nano /etc/default/tomcat6

In the line:

JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx128m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC"

Remove “-Xmx128m”. You should have something like:

At the end of the file, paste the information below:

BONITA_HOME="-DBONITA_HOME=/opt/bos_conf/bonita"
BONITA_API_TYPE="-Dorg.ow2.bonita.api-type=Standard"
SECURITY_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=/opt/bos_conf/jaas-standard.cfg"
CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS $BONITA_HOME $BONITA_API_TYPE $SECURITY_OPTS -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8-Xshare:auto -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError"
export CATALINA_OPTS

Take care to set the path you used if it is different from the tutorial.

To save and quit, “ctrl+x”, then “y” and “enter”. Then restart Tomcat:

sudo service tomcat6 restart

Tomcat is ready!

Production test

Test if everything is running well with a bonita.war file provided in the deploy bundle. In Ubuntu, webapps must be placed in “/var/lib/tomcat6/”.

sudo cp ~/bos_deploy/bonita_user_experience/with_execution_engine_without_client/bonita.war /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/

sudo chown tomcat6:tomcat6 bonita.war

sudo service tomcat6 restart

When Tomcat is restarted, open your favourite web browser, and go to “http://localhost:8080/bonita/” or “http://yourIPaddress:8080/bonita/”. Example, in this tutorial: “http://192.168.0.209:8080/bonita/”. You can log using “admin” and “bpm”.

If you already have a .bar file to test, go ahead and use it. If you don’t, then start BOS Studio, select “Buy a mini”, and in the menu, select “File / Export”. It will create the “Buy_a_MINI–3.2.bar” file. In the User Experience, click on “Administration” on the top right, then “Processes” and “Install”. On the popup, “Choose file” and then, click on “Install”, then “Close”. When the upload is finished (you can see a message display on the top right of the processes list) the process should be displayed in the deployed process list.

To start a process instance, go back to the “User view”. In the left column, under “Start a case”, click on “Buy a MINI”. The form should appear, if you can play with the process, everything is working.

If you check the content of the database, it should have changed to reflect the activity of the process.

You are done, and your production server for Bonita Open Solution 5.10 is ready.

Troubleshooting

Are you having problems installing and running BOS 5.10? You can get support from the community on the forum: http://www.bonitasoft.org/forum/. You will find the log in:

• Tomcat6, in “/var/log/tomcat6″
• PostgreSQL, in “/var/log/postgresql”
• Bonita Engine, in

Don’t forget to provide their content on your forum post if necessary.

References

Ubuntu community documentation about Java

PostgreSQL JDBC driver

PostgreSQL documentation

Tomcat 6 documentation

A special big thanks to the BonitaSoft Service team for their support and help with this tutorial.

We need you!

We are looking for Bonita Open Solution enthusiasts for a very special mission: to test our next release and give us some feedback.

But be fast: only the first 10 people to reply via a comment to this post can be part of the “happy few”.

Will you be one of our valued testers?

We will use:

• Ubuntu Desktop and Server 12.04 LTS,
• OpenJDK 6 ,
• PostgreSQL 9.1,
• Tomcat 6, and of course,
• the Open Source version of Bonita Open Solution (BOS) 5.10, all in 64 bits.

This tutorial is aimed for beginners, but you will need to have Ubuntu installed and have basic knowledge about using terminals.

This first post is about installing BOS 5.10: Bonita Studio. The second part is about installing a basic production server.

Bonita Studio

OpenJDK

To get Bonita Studio working, you will need to have a Java machine. The purpose of this tutorial is to use Open Source software everywhere possible, so we will use OpenJDK. Open a terminal and run:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

As always when using “sudo”, the system will ask for your password. If your system has more than one version of Java, configure which one your system uses by entering the following command in a terminal window:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

This will present you with a selection that looks similar to the following (the details may differ for you):

There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).

Selection Path Priority Status

————————————————————

* 0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1061      auto mode

1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1061      manual mode

2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1051      manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1

BOS 5.10 should work well with OpenJDK 6.

Download and install Bonita Studio

Go to http://www.bonitasoft.com/products/download/bonita-open-solution-32-or-64-bits-systems-2 If you want, you can register for free on the BonitaSoft corporate website (this is not compulsory). Yur download should start automatically. This package includes both the 32 bits and 64 bits versions of BOS. Once downloaded, just extract BOS in your home directory. In Ubuntu, you can do that simply with a right click on the archive, then choose “Extract here”. It is done.

Start Bonita Studio

Open the BOS-5.10 directory with the File Manager, and right click on BonitaStudio.sh. Choose “Properties”. In “Permissions”, check “Allow executing file as a program”.

To start Bonita Studio, double click on “BonitaStudio.sh”. Choose “Run” if you have to choose an action for executing this file. Bonita Studio should start.

Remember that when you start using BOS 5.10, don’t move its directory. If you do, you will lose your workspace.

Create a shortcut in the menu

Instead of starting BOS Studio with the BonitaStudio.sh file, you can create a launcher in the menu. Using the “Alacarte” menu editor, it should work in Unity, and in other desktop environments as well. First, install “Alacarte”:

sudo apt-get install alacarte

Then, in the application menu, look for “Alacarte” and start it. Select “Programming” section, or another section of your choice, then click on “New item”. On the “Create Launcher” window, fill in the following information:

• Type: Application
• Name: Bonita Studio 5.10
• Command: click on “Browse” and go in ~/BOS-5.10/, select “BonitaStudio.sh”
• Comment: can be empty
• Logo: click on the logo, and go in ~/BOS-5.10/studio/, select “icon.xpm”

Then click OK. The menu item is created. You should be able to find it in your menu.

Access Welcome Screen

If you have already used Bonita Studio on Windows, you know there is a useful Welcome screen. On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS it is missing. Bonita Studio needs a version of XulRunner that is not available in the repositories.

To fix that, we will get packages from Debian. Get the three packages below using your local mirror when possible:

• http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/amd64/xulrunner-1.9.1/download
• http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/amd64/libmozjs2d/download
• http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/amd64/libhunspell-1.2-0/download

Then copy them into your BOS-5.10 directory. Once this is done, open a terminal and follow the steps:

cd ~/BOS-5.10

sudo dpkg -i xulrunner-1.9.1_1.9.1.16-20_amd64.deb libhunspell-1.2-0_1.2.11-1_amd64.deb libmozjs2d_1.9.1.16-20_amd64.deb

sudo apt-get -f install

If you get dependency errors, “sudo apt-get -f install” will fix them and finish the installation of the packages. If you start Bonita Studio now, you should see the Welcome screen.

Test a Process

We need a process to test that everything is working well. Try using one of the processes packaged with BOS. On the Welcome screen, in the “Design” section, choose the “Buy a Mini” example. Once it is open, click on “Run” in the Studio menu. It should open your default Internet browser and start the process with the first form: “Choose a car”.

If you can play with the “Buy a Mini” process, it means that Bonita Studio is working. You can now start developing your processes.

Troubleshooting

Are you having problems installing and running BOS 5.10? You can get support from the community on the forum: http://www.bonitasoft.org/forum/ You will find the log in “~/BOS-5.10/studio/workspace/.metadata/”. There are two relevant files:

• “engine.log”, the log file of the embeded engine in the Studio, to test yoru processes;
• “.log”, the log file of the Studio itself.

Don’t forget to provide their content on your forum post.

References

Thanks to PaulBais and Ivan Caplovic from the Bonita community for Xulrunner installation.

Ubuntu Community doc about Java

And of course, as always, we welcome your comments and ideas for other tutorials!

First idea, community support: I am pretty sure you will agree that we need a way to make it more attractive and efficient than our “good old” forum. Looking on the web at what is popular at the moment, I think that a Question & Answer would do the job well!

Of course, this means we have to find a good system, so community members can continue to have a place to chat, aside.

Now, it is your turn. Please, tell me what you think of this Q&A idea. And of course, if you have other ideas, suggestions, feelings, they are welcome too

Open Source has always been a passion of mine. At BonitaSoft, my passion is now a part of my mission!

A deep look at the community contributions and the forum reveal a very technical community, with many members highly skilled in Bonita Open Solution. There are 50k+ members on the forum, more than 5000 new members last month,  nearly 300 contributed extensions and 32 product translations available. This is really impressive.

So now, let’s all think about how to make the community more social, with more modern tools for better collaboration among everyone. We want to make the Bonita community the ultimate place for every BPM enthusiast.

I am very excited to tell you that at BonitaSoft, we have already started to work on this vision. A new Community website is under construction and will be ready when we release Bonita 6!

Feel free to send me your suggestions, ideas, and thoughts. Let’s have fun with Bonita – in our community.

Follow me on:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

This contest for anyone who has ever seen an Extreme Process. A process can be “Extreme” because of silliness, over-complication, the time it takes, the number of people involved, or anything you’ve seen that could have been and should have been done better! It can be an every-day process, a business process or even a technical process.

Describe your process experience in a story between 100-200 words long, and submit it on our Extreme Process Facebook page before midnight on March 15th, 2013.

The entry with the most “likes” wins the contest and the winner will be announced on March 18. The winning process will be highlighted on a special BonitaSoft blog post and on BonitaSoft’s social media networks.

Your opinion matters. If you have experience using BOS, please leave a review. We appreciate all feedback, and so do others who are considering whether Bonita Open Solution is the right solution for them.

If you are a process expert, or are becoming one, come join our BonitaSoft process experts to share tactics, techniques, and technologies to improve how your department or organization does its day to day business.

Register for one of our Process Efficiency World Tour free half-day events – we’d love to meet you.

There’s more information here – where we will be, and when. And you can register for your city – London, Paris, Brussels, Houston, Barcelona, Milan, Geneva, Hamburg, New York, Grenoble, Bogota.

If you can’t be there in person, you can register for our virtual session.

We’re packing our bags. See you soon!