Installing and configuring a new Oracle RAC database

WebSphere Application Server pooling provides workload balancing and failover to applications.

About this task

WebSphere Commerce instance creation uses the SID of one of the Oracle RAC nodes when it builds the JDBC URL. A number of other WebSphere Commerce utilities also use the SID of one of the Oracle RAC nodes. They must use the SID because of a limitation in WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0 and its support for Oracle. However, you can still use the full capabilities of Oracle RAC in your WebSphere Commerce application. To use its full capabilities, after you create the instance, update the data source definition in WebSphere Application Server to point to the Oracle service name instead of the SID.

Procedure

Install Oracle RAC and create an Oracle database.
Install Oracle Version 12c Version 12.1 and create the database before you install WebSphere Commerce and create a WebSphere Commerce instance. For more information about installing Oracle, see Oracle Database Online Documentation 12c Release 1 (12.1)
Set up Oracle RAC Single Client Access Name (SCAN) for the RAC cluster by following the Oracle documentation.
Create an Oracle service, oracleservice, on Oracle RAC.
Enable Distributed Transaction Processing (DTP) on the service, and define the preferred and available RAC nodes on the service by following Oracle documentation.
Install WebSphere Commerce and create the WebSphere Commerce instance.
When you create the WebSphere Commerce instance, provide the following information in the database page of the Configuration Manager:

Database type

Oracle

Database administrator name

Oracle_DBA_user_name

Database administrator password

Oracle_DBA_user_password

Database name

db-sid, a SID (not service name) from any node of Oracle RAC, such as, instance_1. The name that you provide for the database name, must be the same as the Oracle SID.

Oracle SID

db-sid, a SID (not service name) from any node of Oracle RAC, such as, instance_1. The name that you provide for the Oracle SID, must be the same as the database name.

Database server host name

db-hostname, which identifies the hostname where db-sid is active.

Database server port

db-listener-port, which identifies the port on which a listener is active for connections to db-sid.
Example: 1521

Full path to data file

Oracle_datafile_directory

Table space Name

tablespace_for_WebSphere_Commerce_data
Ensure that you can connect to db-sid with sqlplus by using a connect-descriptor that is defined with db-sid in tnsnames.ora.
For each WebSphere Application Server, modify the WebSphere Commerce runtime data source in the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console.
1. Open the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console.
2. Click Resources > JDBC > Data sources
3. Ensure that the Common and required data source properties URL shown for the WebSphere Commerce Oracle data source is as follows:
```
jdbc:oracle:thin:@//rac-scan:port/rac-service-name
```
  where
  - rac-scan identifies the hostname that is configured to resolve SCAN listeners.
  - rac-service-name identifies the service to connect to.
  For example:
```
jdbc:oracle:thin:@//wc-rac-scan:1521/oracleservice
```
Optional: Configure the WebSphere Commerce Quick publish data source in the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console.
Do this step on the authoring server only if the authoring workspace is enabled and the Quick publish function is needed.
1. Open the WebSphere Commerce Quick publish data source configuration page in WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console.
2. Change the Common and required data source properties URL shown for the WebSphere Commerce Quick publish data source is as follows:
```
jdbc:oracle:thin:@//rac-scan:port/rac-service-name
```
  For example:
```
jdbc:oracle:thin:@//wc-production-scan:1521/oracleservice
```
  The Quick publish data source must point to the production database, so that the SCAN that you provide must be the SCAN of production database.