Best practice for installation and deployment

The following pages include Brainwave's Best Practices to follow when deploying and configuring a project.

It is possible to override the parameters configured in the technical configuration using .properties files. Please be aware that there are pros & cons to using the .properties files.

Pros

Single .configuration file

It allows you to have a single .configuration file for all your environments (often called com or common).
Using the properties files you override / overload only environment specific variables, for instance the database or SMTP server connection information.
The rest of the variables values are only set once in the common configuration.

Delivery

There is no need to deliver a new project version to fix a variable value, as it can be updated in the .properties files directly.

Operations

In some contexts, maintenance of some environments (i.e. Prod) are done by other teams than the iGRC project team.
It's often easier for them to update the .properties files without having to update the project itself and mess with the technical configuration file.

Cons

Versioning

Projects are often using a versioning system (i.e. Git) that track changes to the configuration files (excluding development configurations).
Properties files updates will not be tracked in the versioning system (unless those files are also in Git, but that is rarely the case).

Deltas

There can be discrepancies between the variables existing in the configuration files & the ones in the properties files, because the project evolves.
It can be hard to track / update.

Properties files

Properties files can be used to override the technical configuration values.

It means that if a configuration variable value exists in both the .properties files and in the technical configuration file, the value from the .properties files will be used in prior by the project.
If there is no value in the .properties files, then the variable value from the technical configuration file will be used.

These .properties files can be generated from the technical configuration file's Variables tab by clicking on Export to properties files 💾:

This will generate the following files (listed with their corresponding tab in the configuration file):

• config.properties: web portal configuration (Web portal tab)
• datasource.properties: ledger database connection information (Ledger base tab)
• mail.properties: email & smtp server configuration (Mail server tab)
• project.properties: configuration variables (Variables tab)
• workflow.properties: workflow database connection (Workflow tab)

Properties usage

Web portal

To use .properties files with the web portal, update the License and properties files directory location value in the Export tab of the technical configuration to Point to the following directory:

Batch

To use .properties files in the batch, use the config directory path parameter of the batch.
As shown in the igrc_batch.cmd help, it's the second parameter, <config directory path>:

:usage

echo "Expecting at least 3 parameters: <project name> <config directory path> <config name> [SIMULATE or FORCE]. Aborting..."
echo "usage: igrc_batch <project name> <config folder> <config name> [SIMULATE]"
echo "<project name> is the project name"
echo "<config directory path> can contain several of these files:"

So for example igrc_batch.cmd Sandbox C:\Users\scabon\Documents\Properties\Sandbox dev where C:\Users\scabon\Documents\Properties\Sandbox is the path to the folder containing the .properties files.

Studio

The studio always uses the values from the technical configuration file for the collect / timeslots, it cannot overload values using the .properties files.

But if your webapp points to the project, you can add .properties files to your /webportal folder to overload their values.

License

The license.lic file is often put in the same folder as the .properties files.
As using the .properties files is optional, it is possible to have only the license.lic file in the path to the properties folder for either the batch or the portal, as they both require a license to function properly.

Warnings

New variables

It's easy to forget that new variables were added to the project (for example because a new facet was installed, presence of a new .configvariables file in your project), and to add those to the .configuration files, meaning that only some of the configuration variables are overloaded by properties.

It means that each time:

• A new .configvariables file appears in your project, do not miss to add new variables in your .configuration file (by simply opening and save it)
• A new variable is added to the .configuration file of your project, you should set its value and export .properties files

But, in that case, take care about not to overwrite some existing values in your .properties files not identical to your project configuration.

Generation

Generating the properties files from the Studio creates files with a subset of all possible variables.
I.e. not all variables that can be overloaded are listed (for the webportal for instance).

For instance, from the Mail server tab, it is possible to set redirectto and recipientsinattachment properties but those are not exported in .properties files.

Here is the result of the export of the mail.properties fils: