E-mailFor pilot and production installations a Sakai database and privileged user must be prepared for Sakai's use. Consult your database documentation for details, but below are sample commands for MySQL.
You can check to see if MySQL is installed on your system by checking the version from the command line.
sakaiger$ mysql --version mysql Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.45, for apple-darwin8.5.1 (i686) using readline 5.0
If MySQL is not installed download it from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/. Linux users should install MySQL using a package or binaries if possible. Choose the standard configuration. Windows users should consider installing MySQL as a service. Remember to include MySQL's /bin directory in your PATH statement.
C:\opt\mysql\> mysql -u root -p Enter password: ****** Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 51 to server version: 4.1.5-gamma-nt Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer. mysql> create database sakai default character set utf8; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec) mysql> grant all on sakai.* to sakaiuser@'localhost' identified by 'sakaipassword'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec mysql> grant all on sakai.* to sakaiuser@'127.0.0.1' identified by 'sakaipassword'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> quit
Note that you will not need to create Sakai database objects (tables, indices, etc) when setting up your database. Sakai generates its own database schema automatically during the Tomcat setup process via the autoDDL setting in sakai.properties.
UTF-8 Character Set
Irrespective of whether you utilize MySQL or Oracle be sure you have configured your database to use the UTF-8 character set. Failure to do so will result in range of issues when attempting to use Unicode characters in Sakai. Consult your Db documentation or a local DBA for instructions on how to set your database up properly.
If you are uncertain as to how your database is currently configured, you can check with a query. Here is a sample query for checking an Oracle instance:
SQL> select value from nls_database_parameters where parameter = 'NLS_CHARACTERSET'; VALUE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AL32UTF8
For Mysql, the command to see what encoding your database is currently set to is "show create database sakai", assuming, of course, that your database is named "sakai". e.g.:
mysql> show create database sakai; +----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Database | Create Database | +----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | sakai | CREATE DATABASE `sakai` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */ | +----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Converting a database from one character set to another is a non-trivial operation, particularly if it is a large production database. We recommend strongly that you verify this aspect of the database creation and configuration process before deploying Sakai.