Redeploying iDashboards In Tomcat

This document is intended for iDashboards users who wish to deploy a service release of iDashboards in the Apache Tomcat application server. A service release differs from a major release in that it typically contains no new functionality, but rather only bug fixes. A major release is designated by a number, for example 6.1. A service release is an update to a major release, and its name consists of the major release number followed by a letter, for example 6.1b. If its corresponding major release (or a service release thereof) is already deployed, replacing it with a new service release of iDashboards is a fairly simple process. A repository update will not be required; therefore its not necessary to back up the repository. (Frequent repository backups are good practice, however.) Typically, the only thing that needs to be done is to deploy the new idashboards.war file. This document explains how to do that in the Apache Tomcat application server. For other application servers, their provided documentation must be consulted. In the steps outlined below, <Tomcat Install Dir> refers to the directory where the Tomcat application server was installed. For assistance, contact support@idashboards.com.

1. Verify your current iDashboards version

First, verify that your current version of iDashboards is the same major release as the service release you are about to deploy. To determine the release number, log into the iDashboards Admin application. On the Admin Home screen, at or near the bottom of the table of license information, is the build ID, which will look something like this:
6.1a-111208123719-131.14

The group of characters before the first hyphen, which in the above example would be 6.1a, is the version of iDashboards that is running, and 6.1 would be its major release version.

2. Shut down the Tomcat application server

If Tomcat is running on a Windows server, log into that server. There should be a system tray icon that looks like this and whose tooltip reads Apache Tomcat or iDashboards Server. Right-click the icon and choose Stop service from the popup menu to stop it. If Tomcat is running on a Linux or Unix server, there is unfortunately no standard way for shutting down Tomcat. Ask the server administrator to shut it down.

3. Remove the current iDashboards deployment

In the directory <Tomcat Install Dir>\webapps, there should be a file named idashboards.war. Move this file to a backup location completely outside of the webapps directory. Do not rename it. Also, in the webapps directory, there should be a Page 1 of 2

subdirectory named idashboards. Delete this subdirectory completely. Do not rename it. In the directory <Tomcat Install Dir>\work\Catalina\localhost, there should be a subdirectory named idashboards. Delete this subdirectory completely also. Do not rename it.

4. Deploy the new idashboards.war file

To deploy the new idashboards.war file, copy it into the <Tomcat Install Dir>\webapps directory.

5. Restart Tomcat
On a Windows server, right click the system tray icon for the Tomcat application server and choose Start service from the popup menu. For a Unix or Linux server, ask the server administrator to restart Tomcat.

6. Verify the newly-deployed iDashboards version

To verify that the new version of iDashboards has been properly deployed, log into the iDashboards Admin application and check the version as described in step 1 above.

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