When should I run initialSetup?

As part of the installation and configuration of any Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product you will have to run initialSetup.[sh] to reflect any technical configuration settings in the product. But you may not need to run it each time you change something.

Typically if you look at the Configuration/Operations Guides for your Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product you will notice that to set the configuration settings up you run configureEnv[.sh]. This registers all the basic configuration settings in the ENVIRON.INI configuration file.

To reflect these settings in the configuration files you typically need to run initialSetup[.sh]. This process reads the ENVIRON.INI configuration file and using predefined templates it builds the configuration files necessary, creates the WAR/EAR files used by the product for you in one swoop.

There is an overhead in creating the EAR/WAR file and an outage to redeploy it, so you want to minimize the times you have to rebuild the EAR/WAR file.

But some changes can be made outside this setup and do not necessaily need to run initialSetup[.sh]. Here is a quick guide to when you do not have to run initialSetup[.sh]:

• If you make a change to a setting NOT contained in the configuration files. For example, there are additional Web Application Server settings that can be altered that are not in the configuration files
• If you make the change in the externalized configuration files as outlined in the post “Single Fix 8218568 – Externalize configuration files“

Let us take two examples:

• When you install the product, there is a default user called SYSUSER. This user is created in the product at installation time and is populated in the security system of the Web Application server as part of the installation. This user is only used to create the first users used by the product. It should not used to run the product or used for any purpose other than create the real users of the product. If you have to change the password for SYSUSER, you simply change the password in the security system configure on the Web Application Server. You may also reflect that change in ENVIRON.INI using configureEnv[.sh] for completeness. But it is not required to run initialSetup[.sh]
• When you install the product, you specify a user and password for the database. This is stored in the hibernate.properties file. If you need to change the userid and/or password then you need to make that change using configureEnv[.sh] and then run initialSetup[.sh] if you are not externalizing the changes in the WAR/EAR file.

You do not always need to run initialSetup[.sh]. A good rule of thumb is if you need to make the change in the EAR/WAR file then run it otherwise don’t. If you make a change to the ENVIRON.INI settings then you can either reflect that manually (if you externalize the configuration settings) or run initialSetup[.sh].