Installing Oracle’s UCM on Windows 7

Recently I’ve taken the plunge to Windows 7.  I was a longtime user of Vista (and no matter what people say, post SP1 it was a great OS), and I’ve grown accustomed to the many niceties it brought with it (sorry XP, but you’re old and busted now).  I’ve been really pleased with how fast it is compared to Vista and I’m starting to grow fond of the new dock/start menu.

Besides doing a fair amount of .NET development, I also work with Java and specifically

Oracle’s UCM product.  UCM is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system that is primarily based on Java technologies.  Oracle allows a developer to run a development instance on their machines, but UCM unfortunately isn’t supported on anything newer than Server 2003.  I and others been able to get UCM to run on Vista 32-bit in the past, but ran into some problems on x64 with IIS, and I never did get to spend a lot of time on that problem.  Luckily I found it was pretty easy to install UCM on Windows 7 x64.  These instructions should also apply to Vista and Server 2008/R2 as well.

I’ll give the highlights of installing UCM.  Most of the time you can reference the UCM Installation guide for Windows for the normal steps.  First of all, you need to make sure IIS7 is installed and running.  See my screenshot below for the options that worked for me (basically everything but the IIS6 Admin Console).  UCM uses scripts when installing in IIS6, and to get those to run, you’ll need the management scripts and tools.  The other big one is ISAPI extension and filter support.

Next you’ll need to make sure IIS has 32-bit most enabled.  (NOTE: This is setting the setting through the IIS Metabase compatibility, to set this setting in the IIS Console you can edit the application pool Content Server runs under or the AppPool defaults by setting the ‘Enable 32-bit Applications’ under the Advanced Settings for Application Pools).  I’m pretty sure that ASP.NET applications will run in 32-bit mode as well once this is turned on, but hopefully that isn’t a deal breaker for you.  To enable this you’ll need to open a command prompt as an Administrator and type the following command:

cscript \Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1

If you get a ‘bad command or file name’, check to ensure that you installed the IIS6 Scripting Tools.

Now, start the installer as an administrator (Run As Administrator).  The first thing that you’ll run into installing UCM is that it can’t determine the platform when launching the installer: intradoc.common.ServiceException: Unable to determine your platform.  To get past this problem, simply right click on ‘Installer.exe’ and select ‘Properties’. Select the ‘Compatibility’ tab and make sure to check the ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:’ check box with the ‘Windows Server 2003 (Service Pack 1)’ selected from the drop down.  Now launch the installer and install like normal.  Make sure to have your database drivers (if needed) ready to go.  I used SQL Server 2008, so JTDS worked great (don’t forget to create your schema/database first!).  When you are asked what web server – choose IIS 5.0/6.0.  Since you have the compatibility stuff installed, you should be good to go.  You may notice a message: ‘Unable to start IIS’ when installing.  This is ok – although you may need to do some tweaking (but hopefully not).

Post installation most of the web server installation work will be done for you.  To confirm that the ISAPI filter was installed properly, go to the web server’s ISAPI and CGI Restrictions and make sure there is a [CS-InstallDir]\idcplg\idc_cgi_isapi-[instancename].dll listed (and set to ‘allowed’).  Finally make sure the ISAPI filter is installed on the ‘Default Web Site’.

When you’re finished, everything should be working.  Browse to your local web server and tada!  Hope you find this information helpful.

**UPDATE** I noticed while patching UCM that IIS7 may restrict request sizes to 30MB by default.  The latest CS Patch is 88MB so this is a problem when patching through the Component Manager.  To fix this, go to the IIS Admin console and click ‘Request Filtering’.  Now click ‘Edit Feature Settings’ and increase the ‘Maximum allowed content length (Bytes):’ and add a few zeros (30MB is the default).  Now you should be able to patch!

Comments

[Kelley Gradert]

Is SQL 2008 even supported yet with 10G?

[Aaron Romine]

@Kelley - No, not officially. Although it appears to work with the latest JTDS drivers ok. I've been running UCM with it since SQL Server 2008 Express Edition was released. Fulltext works too (just in case you want some Site Studio 10gR4 goodness).

The official certification matrix only shows SQL Server 2000 SP4 and SQL Server 2005. Although I would hope (and venture to guess) that when UCM 11g is released it will have official support for Server 2008/SQL Server 2008.

[abhiram]

Great Post. Helped a lot. however I have created a step by step on how to install on windows 7 64-bit with apache. Hoping this could help wanderers. link
> http://www.bullraider.com/stellent-oracle-ucm/tutorials/installing-universal-content-server-on-windows-7