Creating databases

For information about creating databases, refer to the Oracle product documentation. For information on the recommended database architecture and the databases you will need to create, see the Planning for Oracle topic. Be sure that all databases to be used with WebSphere Portal are created as UNICODE character set databases.

If you are using remote Oracle databases, you must also copy the ojdbc14.jar file from the remote Oracle server to the WebSphere Portal machine. The typical location is the oracle_home/jdbc/lib directory. Record the copy location on your local machine for future reference.

When creating Oracle databases for use with WebSphere Portal, you should consider the following information:

• The Oracle databases must be created manually before configuring WebSphere Portal.
• All databases must be created using UNICODE Database and National character sets such as UTF8, AL32UTF8, or AL16UTF16.
• It is recommended that all databases to be used with WebSphere Portal are configured in Dedicated Server Mode.
• Determine if your Oracle server will be remote or local to the WebSphere Portal installation.
• If using an earlier version of Oracle (9i or earlier), ensure that Oracle JVM is also installed.
• After installing the database software for WebSphere Portal, you will need to set the buffer pools allocated to the Oracle database in order for WebSphere Portal to communicate with the Java Content Repository database. Use the following recommended values as a guide. Refer to Oracle product documentation for information on how to set the buffer pools. Recommended initial buffer pool sizes:

  db_block_size = 8192
  db_cache_size = 300M
  db_files = 1024
  log_buffer = 65536
  open_cursors = 1500
  pga_aggregate_target = 200M
  pre_page_sga = true
  processes = 300
  shared_pool_size = 200M

  Note: If you are using IBM Java Content Repository, the open_cursors value may need to be increased based on the table count in the Java Content Repository schema.