Installation topologies

iKnowBase components

The diagram shows the various components of an iKnowBase installation:

• The database (“iKnowBase repository”) contains configuration, metadata and content. This is deployed to an Oracle Database.
• The iknowbase-resource application contains static web resources, such as scripts, css-files and images. This is normally either deployed to a web server in front of the application server or deployed directly to the application server itself.
• The iknowbase-webapp contains all iKnowBase Java web modules, which may be enabled or disabled in the configuration. This is deployed in a java servlet container.

See the Java Applications section for details about modules and deployment.
See the Configuration section for details about how the modules can be enabled/disabled and configured.

Deployment options

The iKnowBase repository

The iKnowBase repository is installed onto an Oracle database. For production use, we recommend that you always install at least three repositories: development (where you build new functionality), test (where you verify that the functionality works) and production (where live data lives).

For smaller installations, use a single database and create schemas (database users) for the required repositories. This is extremely easy to set up, but provides limited isolation between the environments. Some applications are built using hard coded schema names, and thus require a different database instance for each repository. These instances may all reside on the same Oracle database server, using the same database license.

Advanced installations (typically with large data volumes or stricter security requirements) will want to install the production repository on its own server; the development and test repositories may still be co-located if that is desired.

The web tier

The web tier also has can be installed in a large variety of ways:

For most installations, use the iKnowBase web serverserver to host the web applications. This server is customized for running iKnowBase, containing all required functionality in a small, easy-to-manage installation.

• For small installations, run a single iKnowBase web server on the same server as the database.
• For larger installations, run multiple iKnowBase web servers, on one or more physical machines.
• For higher security requirements, install separate instances for internal and public use. Run development and similar services only on the internal server.

Customers that already have an established and managed infrastructure using a supported third party application server may also chose to run the web tier on that server. Note that we recommend setting up the iKnowBase web server even then, since the iKnowBase program is also used for repository installation and upgrades, and is a useful management and troubleshooting tool.

We generally recommend installing an Apache (or similar) proxy server in front of the iKnowBase web server. This is useful for things like SSL-termination, serving static content, redirect rules, virtual hosts etc.

Supported infrastructure

See “Supported platforms” in iKnowBase Release Notes.