Part Two Getting LCDS

At this point I really didn't quite get what LCDS was. I mean I know what it does, I know it's some sort of libraries, but what "is" it. So far I'd gathered that it was a set of libraries and some example java applications that run on your JAVA application server. Those JAVA applications can have access to server resources like my MySQL server, and they can run as little servers that respond to request from my Flex applications. So a little complicated but not to bad. The first nice surprise about LCDS is although it isn't free, Adobe does have a non expiring one CPU license for developers to use. So that's what you're going to want to get. Now the first time around I installed this on my Ubuntu box, only to find that all of the sample code was set to connect to local host. The next logical step was to install it on my Mac Book but, ahhhhhggg! Adobe doesn't offically support it for the Mac platform. Now I won't rant and rave about that I know there aren't as many Macs out there etc etc, and I do have Windows installed here as a Virtual Machine, but did I really want to do that? No, and thankfully nickul over at adobe was nice enough to post this article on how to install LCDS on a MAC anyway. You can read the original article here, although it didn't quite work for me it inspired me to try. First you need to get LCDS from Adobe and as Nick points out you need the AIX version (the Java Version). I got mine here http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/. You'll need a free Adobe ID which you should already have if you've downloaded Flex Builder. Make sure you remember to copy down the serial number they give you, it's the first thing you'll need at install. When the file is done downloading just double click on it to start the install, enter your serial number, agree to it's terms and it should finish up on it's own. It will install your new LCDS files in a folder called Adobe, but it puts that folder at the root of your filesystem. To find it just click on your hard drive icon in finder and you'll see it there at the very top level. Well now you've installed it, now what? Well now you need to "deploy" it to your jboss folder. Remember before when I said I have no idea what I'm doing? Yeah well here we are. What you need to do is copy the .war files that are in your new Adobe/LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5 folder to your JBOSS deploy folder. As I found out JBOSS has several folders where it goes to run java applications with the default one being called... well default. You can find this folder under your root JBOSS folder: JBOSS FOLDER | |---Server| |--default| |--deploy If you put those .war files in that folder and then start up your server you can then go to http://localhost:8080/lcds-samples/ and you should see the LCDS samples page. At this point you can look at the samples but they don't work. That's because they're trying to connect to the sample database that comes with LCDS, and we haven't started it up yet. It wasn't really clearly explained to me that the sample database was actually a sample database server that you need to run but it is, and you'll find docs telling you it's no where close to being the kind of thing you'd want to base a product on but it works. Anyway just open up another terminal window or tab and go back to the Adobe/LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5 directory. Under here you'll find a directory called sampledb, and inside sampledb is a script called startdb.sh. That's what you're looking for, just start that with a ./startdb.sh, then restart your jboss server. Now you should be able to go to http://localhost:8080/lcds-samples/ and all the samples should be working for you.