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Using a Virtual Machine

Install Virtualbox

You will need Oracle VM Virtualbox. Binaries for all major operating sytems are available free of charge from https://www.virtualbox.org/.

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and your DSpace+Oracle instance should come up at http://localhost:8080/xmlui/.

Using a Docker Container

There is also a docker container image that you can pull from the Docker hub which will start up an Oracle database container that is configured to work with DSpace. In order to use this image, you need to install Docker on your development machine.

Starting the DSpace Oracle database container

Create a directory where the Oracle database server can store its data, for example /tmp/dspace-oracle-data. Then execute the following command to start the Oracle database server:

$ docker run -d -p 1521:1521 -v /tmp/dspace-oracle-data:/u01/app/oracle --name dspace-oracle atmire/dspace-oracle:11g2

This will create a new Docker container with name "dspace-oracle" that will run the Oracle database server.

Configure the DSpace database connection

 Next, update your DSpace database configuration so that it has the following property values:

        db.dialect = org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect
        db.schema = dspace
        db.name = oracle
        db.driver = oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver
        db.url = jdbc:oracle:thin:@//localhost:1521/XE
        db.

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username = dspace
        db.password = dspace

Double check the database server is running and start Tomcat

Before starting Tomcat, you should make sure that the initialisation of the database server completed. You can check the logs of the database server by executing the command

$ docker logs dspace-oracle

You should see a message that starts with "Database ready to use.". If that is not the case, wait until the message appears (you need to re-execute the "logs" command each time).

When the database is ready, you can double check that your DSpace database configuration is correct by running this command an verifying the output:

$ bin/dspace database test

Attempting to connect to database using these configurations:
 - URL: jdbc:oracle:thin:@//localhost:1521/XE
 - Driver: oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver
 - Username: dspace
 - Password: [hidden]
 - Schema: dspace

Testing connection...
Connected successfully!

If DSpace is configured correctly, you can then start Tomcat

Stop, restart or remove the database server.

Here are some commands to stop, restart or completely remove the Oracle database container:

To stop the container:

$ docker stop dspace-oracle

To start a previously stopped container:

$ docker start dspace-oracle

To completely remove the complete database container and its data (in order to start over with a clean database):

$ docker rm dspace-oracle
$ rm -rf /tmp/dspace-oracle-data

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