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Install the Full Distribution on a Tomcat Application Server manually

This section describes how you can install Camunda 7 and its components on a vanilla Apache Tomcat, if you are not able to use the pre-packaged Tomcat distribution. In addition, download a Tomcat distribution or Enterprise Edition Tomcat distribution to fetch the required Camunda modules.

Reading the Guide

Throughout this guide we will use a number of variables to denote common path names and constants:

$TOMCAT_HOME points to the main directory of the tomcat server.
$TOMCAT_VERSION denotes the version of Tomcat server.
$PLATFORM_VERSION denotes the version of Camunda 7 you want to install or already have installed, e.g. 7.0.0.
$TOMCAT_DISTRIBUTION represents the downloaded pre-packaged Camunda 7 distribution for Tomcat, e.g. camunda-bpm-tomcat-$PLATFORM_VERSION.zip or camunda-bpm-tomcat-$PLATFORM_VERSION.tar.gz.

Setup

Before you can install the Camunda components, you need to perform a number of required setup steps.

Create the Database Schema and Tables

In the default configuration of the distribution, the database schema and all required tables are automatically created in an H2 database when the engine starts up for the first time. If you do not want to use the H2 database, you have to

Create a database schema for Camunda 7 yourself.
Install the database schema to create all required tables and default indices using our database schema installation guide.

When you create the tables manually, then you have to configure the engine to not create tables at startup by setting the databaseSchemaUpdate property to false (or, in case you are using Oracle, to noop). In Tomcat, this is done in the bpm-platform.xml, located in the $TOMCAT_DISTRIBUTION\server\apache-tomcat-$VERSION\conf\ folder.

Add BPM Bootstrap Server Listener

Add the entry org.camunda.bpm.container.impl.tomcat.TomcatBpmPlatformBootstrap as Listener before the GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener in your $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml. This class is responsible for starting and stopping Camunda 7 as Tomcat is started and stopped.

<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
  ...
  <Listener className="org.camunda.bpm.container.impl.tomcat.TomcatBpmPlatformBootstrap" />
  ...

Configure a JDBC Resource

To configure a JDBC Resource you have to edit the file $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml. This could look like the following example for an H2 database:

<Server>
  ...
  <GlobalNamingResources>
    ...
    <Resource name="jdbc/ProcessEngine"
              auth="Container"
              type="javax.sql.DataSource"
              factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory"
              uniqueResourceName="process-engine"
              driverClassName="org.h2.Driver"
              url="jdbc:h2:./camunda-h2-dbs/process-engine;TRACE_LEVEL_FILE=0"
              defaultTransactionIsolation="READ_COMMITTED"
              username="sa"
              password="sa"
              maxActive="20"
              minIdle="5"
              maxIdle="20" />
  </GlobalNamingResources>
</Server>

For more information on the creation of JDBC datasources have a look at the documentation of your Tomcat version: 9.0.

Add Camunda 7 Services

Copy the following blocks from ${TOMCAT_DISTRIBUTION}/server/apache-tomcat-${TOMCAT_VERSION}/conf/server.xml into ${TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/server.xml:

     <Resource name="global/camunda-bpm-platform/process-engine/ProcessEngineService!org.camunda.bpm.ProcessEngineService" auth="Container"
              type="org.camunda.bpm.ProcessEngineService"
              description="Camunda 7 Process Engine Service"
              factory="org.camunda.bpm.container.impl.jndi.ProcessEngineServiceObjectFactory" />

    <Resource name="global/camunda-bpm-platform/process-engine/ProcessApplicationService!org.camunda.bpm.ProcessApplicationService" auth="Container"
              type="org.camunda.bpm.ProcessApplicationService"
              description="Camunda 7 Process Application Service"
              factory="org.camunda.bpm.container.impl.jndi.ProcessApplicationServiceObjectFactory" />

Add Required Libraries

Copy all libraries from the $TOMCAT_DISTRIBUTION/lib/ folder to the Tomcat library folder $TOMCAT_HOME/lib:

Furthermore, you have to merge your corresponding JDBC driver into the folder $TOMCAT_HOME/lib.

Add bpm-platform.xml

You have to add the file bpm-platform.xml to the folder $TOMCAT_HOME/conf or, optionally, you can configure the location through some available mechanisms, see Configure location of the bpm-platform.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bpm-platform xmlns="http://www.camunda.org/schema/1.0/BpmPlatform"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.camunda.org/schema/1.0/BpmPlatform http://www.camunda.org/schema/1.0/BpmPlatform ">

  <job-executor>
    <job-acquisition name="default" />
  </job-executor>

  <process-engine name="default">
    <job-acquisition>default</job-acquisition>
    <configuration>org.camunda.bpm.engine.impl.cfg.StandaloneProcessEngineConfiguration</configuration>
    <datasource>java:jdbc/ProcessEngine</datasource>

    <properties>
      <property name="history">full</property>
      <property name="databaseSchemaUpdate">true</property>
      <property name="authorizationEnabled">true</property>
      <property name="jobExecutorDeploymentAware">true</property>
    </properties>

  </process-engine>

</bpm-platform>

Secure Tomcat

Follow the Tomcat Security Howto of your Tomcat version: 9.0.

In particular, go to ${TOMCAT_HOME}/webapps/ and remove the directories ROOT, docs, examples, manager and host-manager.

Optional Components

This section describes how to install optional Camunda dependencies onto a Tomcat server. None of these are required to work with the core platform.

Cockpit, Tasklist and Admin

The following steps are required to deploy the applications:

Download the Camunda web application that contains both applications from our Maven Nexus Server. Or switch to the private repository for the enterprise version (User and password from license required). Choose the correct version named $PLATFORM_VERSION/camunda-webapp-tomcat-$PLATFORM_VERSION.war.
Copy the war file to $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/camunda.war. Optionally you may name it differently or extract it to a folder to deploy it to a different context path.
Startup Tomcat.
Access Cockpit and Tasklist via /camunda/app/cockpit and /camunda/app/tasklist or under the context path you configured.