a quick way to test OpenClinica 3.6

For those of us who want to test release 3.6 before installing it, here is a quick way to do just that.
What we'll do is:

  1. download the war and rename it to oc36.war
  2. let tomcat deploy it
  3. create a new, empty database oc36
  4. make a backup of our existing 3.1.x, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 or 3.5 database
  5. restore that as oc36
  6. copy the directory openclinica.data
  7. modify datainfo.properties
  8. start oc36

start with the war

Start with downloading the zip with the war and then unzip it and rename the war to oc36.war. Once you've done that, copy the war to tomcat/webapps. Tomcat will start deploying it, but it will not be able to start it, because there is no corresponding database. If tomcat does not deploy the war automatically, check with ls -al if tomcat is the owner and if not, issue chown tomcat:tomcat oc36.war

copying the database

We assume that you will want a copy of your existing database and the way to do that is making a new, empty database. Then making a dump of your production database and restoring that to the new one.

sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/psql
create database oc36 with encoding='UTF-8' owner=clinica;
\l
\q

sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/pg_dump openclinica > pg_dump_openclinica_2015081
sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/psql oc36 < pg_dump_openclinica_20150801

(The \l is to check if the creation of the database was successful and the \q to quit psql.)

don't forget the data

Now before we start we must copy the data-directories and we do that with:

cd /usr/local/tomcat
sudo -u tomcat cp -r openclinica.data oc36.data

datainfo.properties anyone?

If you like you can go through datainfo.properties, to edit it to your favorite settings. But the defaults work. Be aware that also in this version the location of the datainfo.properties is now oc36.config in the tomcat directory!

start oc36

As a last step, go to tomcat's manager/html and start oc36.

what to look for?

On https://docs.openclinica.com/release-notes/release-notes-openclinica-3.6 you can find a summary of what's new in this release.
We very much like the option to set the status of CRFs after import. But also the rest-service to get all data.
Then there are some features added for Participate, but these are for the most of us not available, so we will skip them on this site.

Is it worth installing? Depends of course on your situation, but if you are not into importing data into OpenClinica or getting them out of OpenClinica with REST, you might as well skip this release.

and how about tomcat?

Maybe you have been using tomcat6 and now you must upgrade to tomcat7. And maybe you must have both living on the same server: is that an option? O yes it is. Take a look at tomcat 6 & 7 for detailed info.

one last thing

After you've evaluated version 3.6 and decided that indeed you want to upgrade, make a backup first! Do it for example as described here and when you've done that, store the files on another server and a tape and burn them on CD. Well, you get the picture.

Other how-to-pages can be found here.

this page was last reviewed August 2015