Setting up an empty database for the CMS

Crystal Enterprise requires a database (or Oracle tablespace) to store information about the system and its users. Consequently, before you install Crystal Enterprise, you or your database administrator must create a new database on your database server. We strongly recommend that this database be used only for Crystal Enterprise, and not contain other tables.

The following database servers are supported on UNIX:

• Oracle
• DB2
• Sybase

Note:    See the Platforms.txt file included with your product distribution for a complete list of tested database software and version requirements.

It is recommended that you name the new database CEcms, create a new user account named crystal, and assign that user account a secure password. Ensure that the new account has permission to create, modify, and delete tables so that Crystal Enterprise can modify the CEcms database as required. You will need the name of the database, the user account, and the password when you run the Crystal Enterprise installation script.

During the installation process, the install script asks you if you want to reinitialize the database. During a new install, choosing this option causes the install script to create new tables in the database to store Crystal Enterprise data. (In Oracle, choosing this option causes the install script to create Crystal Enterprise tables in the default tablespace of the user whose name you provided during the install.) During a reinstall of Crystal Enterprise, choosing this option causes the install script to reinitialize the tables containing Crystal Enterprise data, destroying any existing data. You must choose to reinitialize the database to proceed with the install. In either case, reinitializing the database does not affect any other tables in that database or tablespace.

(See Upgrading, Migrating, and Importing for information on performing a Crystal Enterprise upgrade without overwriting existing data.)

Note:    

• Consult your database server documentation and/or your database administrator if you are unsure of the procedure for creating a new database.
• Ensure that your database server is set up to use Unicode character encoding (such as UTF-8). Consult your database documentation to determine the settings required for a Unicode configuration. For database servers such as Oracle and Sybase, during installation you need to configure the server to use Unicode encoding for the character data types. For other databases, such as DB2 and Informix, you can create the CMS database with Unicode settings on your existing database server.