Installing the Database

Civic Platform requires an existing Oracle or MS SQL database server and database. If you have not yet installed your database, refer to the Oracle or MS SQL documentation to set up your database. Ensure that your database works well. Check the network connections and driver connections. For more information on the database installation and related preparation work, please refer to the respective database sections below.

Topics

Understanding Database Install and Upgrade Prerequisites

Installing or updating the database requires the following information:

For Oracle:

  • User with privileges to do database updates

  • Password for that user

  • TNS name of the database

  • sqlplus. You must install sqlplus and make sure it exists in the PATH environment variable.

  • (Required only for new installation) Manually grant access on DB packages “DBMS_RANDOM” and “DBMS_LOB” to public.

  • (Required only for new installation) Manually create Civic Platform and Jetspeed database table spaces.

  • The initial database password for the regular Accela and Jetspeed database user cannot have special characters such as !, #, -, _, etc. If your agency has a security policy that requires passwords to have special characters, passwords can be changed after the Civic Platform installer has created the database users.

For MS SQL Server:

  • User with privileges to do database updates

  • Password for that user

  • Name of database

  • Server name or IP address of the machine with the database

  • Microsoft SQL server

  • The initial database password for the regular Accela database user cannot have special characters such as !, #, -, _, etc. If your agency has a security policy that requires passwords to have special characters, passwords can be changed after the Civic Platform installer has created the database users.

Installing Oracle

A DBA should choose to install one empty db (SID) while installing the Oracle database server software, or opt to do so during post installation. After the db (SID) installation, the DBA owns the SYS account and password.

The $ORACLE_HOME/database or $ORACLE_HOME/dbs directory needs to have at least 2G disk space for storing data files.

Note: If your agency is using Oracle 12c, you must add the following parameters in the sqlnet.ora file:
   SQLNET.ALLOWED_LOGON_VERSION_SERVER=8
   SQLNET.ALLOWED_LOGON_VERSION_CLIENT=8

The above sqlnet parameters replaced SQLNET.ALLOWED_LOGON_VERSION, which has been deprecated in Oracle 12c. For reference, see https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/UPGRD/deprecated.htm#UPGRD52905.

Installing MS SQL Server

Create a user account with SYSADMIN role and set the default database as master.

The MSSQL residing location (e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Data) need to have at least 2G disk space for storing data files.

Transparent Data Encryption

You can encrypt data at rest using transparent data encryption or other disk encryption technologies. Accela Civic Platform has been successfully tested on Oracle and SQL Server databases that utilize Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).

IMPORTANT: If your agency implements TDE, you must implement it at the tablespace level for Oracle or at the database level for SQL Server.