Recipe for Migrating Hippo CMS Database from One to Another

Sometimes people want to migrate an existing database of Hippo CMS from one to another. For example, they have been running Hippo CMS on Oracle database, but after a while they started thinking about moving their on-premise system and database to a cloud platform. Sounds like a typical use case and that there must be some solutions already out there, right?

Well, surprisingly many people don't know that Apache Jackrabbit has provided a repository copying (or "backup" or "migration" as they call in the documentation) tool since v1.6, dated first in 2010!

There are some reasons why people don't know about the useful tool:

• Many people use a vendor specific Apache Jackrabbit repository implementations from a specific project or product, not the Apache Jackrabbit Standalone Server itself. So, even if the Backup and migration feature is well documented in Apache Jackrabbit Standalone Server page, it is hard for them to follow.
• Each vendor specific implementation with Apache Jackrabbit, such as Hippo CMS  has some tweaks for their own purposes, including extra libraries on top of the default Apache Jackrabbit modules. So, if users don't know which extra libraries to add more by themselves, it can hardly work for them.

That's why I created a 'recipe' project in one of my GitHub repositories:

• https://github.com/woonsanko/recipe-for-hippo-db-migration

The recipe introduces a step-by-step guide, with Hippo CMS specific examples. I think it should be helpful to other Apache Jackrabbit derivatives too. Please browse the source.

Last but not least, many thanks to Apache Jackrabbit Standalone Server tool! Cheers!

Node.js is great! Run Reverse Proxy on your laptop!

Node.js is great! You can test your Hippo CMS project with a full-featured Reverse Proxy Server on your local development machine SO EASILY! This enables you to test it as same as your production server. You can download the reverse proxy script here: https://github.com/woonsan/hippo7-rproxy-nodejs.

By the way, this solution is very generic, agnostic to Hippo CMS, so you can apply to any different scenarios for different backends other than Hippo CMS, just by configuring the mappings in the script. See the README.md for the details.

Hippo CMS solutions usually consist of multiple web applications and system administrators often deploy a reverse proxy server before Java application servers for many reasons. Apache HTTP Server with mod_proxy has been one of the most popular solutions for the reverse proxy node.

However, it is not so convenient to install Apache HTTP Server on a developer's computer. Sometimes they have to install compilers, make tools, etc. in order to build Apache HTTP Server!

So, I looked for an alternative solution for convenience of developers who want to test in the same environment as the production server. The solution is Node.js!
Yes, I was able to implement a full-featured, reliable reverse proxy script with Node.js very quickly.
This is my reverse proxy script project based on Node.js:

• https://github.com/woonsan/hippo7-rproxy-nodejs

How to run the reverse proxy server script

Note: You need to install Node.js in order to run Reverse Proxy Server script.
          And, let's suppose you run the Hippo CMS 7 with Tomcat. e.g, `mvn -P cargo.run` at port 8080.

1. Follow the installation instruction in https://github.com/woonsan/hippo7-rproxy-nodejs.
2. Move to the root folder of your Hippo CMS 7 project in the command line console and run the following command:
   
   

   $ sudo node rproxy.js
   

   
   The above command will run the Reverse Proxy Server at port 80 by default. (You need super user access to open port 80. That's why you need `sudo` in this example.)
   You can run it at a different port like the following example:
   
   

   $ node rproxy.js 8888
   

Now, if you run the rproxy.js at port 80, then visit http://localhost/ simply.

Note: Finally, DON'T FORGET to turn off '@showPort' and '@showContextPath' in /hst:hst/hst:hosts node in your Hippo Repository! If you want to run the rproxy.js at port 80 and remove the /site context path, then you must turn off those properties.
 
OK. Now enjoy working with rproxy.js (powered by Node.js) !!