IDI Development: Promoting Code From TEST to PROD

Background

The documentation on this topic is slim on the gory details, so I figured I would write a little bit about it. 

Situation

If you have different TEST/DEV and PROD environments (as you should), you will be creating solutions in TEST/DEV, then you need to somehow get those solutions to PROD. There are two difference scenarios to consider at this point.

1. Solutions with no external properties files

This is the easy scenario. And the way to make it the easiest is if you add your PROD IDI Server to the list of Servers in your TEST/DEV CE (in the bottom left hand pane of your CE):

Adding a remote server is easy if you simply have all of the defaults in place and all servers are at the same version of IDI. If you've updated certificates and/or have different versions of IDI, it's harder. So for this post, I'm going to assume you're on the easy path. So to add a remote server, you just need to first add a server to create a new server document. To keep things simple, name it the same as the remote hostname. Then right-click that server and select "Open Configuration". In the configuration, point to the remote IDI server like so:

My remote server is named jazzsm9, and the IDI server is running on the default port of 1099. Just the first (Server API Address) field needs to be filled in. It will actually fill in the last field (ActiveMQ Management port) automatically for you based on the port you specify in the first field. once you add it, the server should show up with a green circle with an inscribed white triangle next to it, like this:

Now you can simply Export your solution (Project) directly from the CE to the remote server. 

To do this:

1. Right-click your project and select "Export..."

2. Select "IBM Security Verify Directory Integrator-> Runtime Configuration (e.g. rs.xml)"

3. On the dialog that follows, make sure to select "Server", select the appropriate server, and specify a name for the solution. The name you pick will be the name of the XML file created in that remote server's $SOLUTION_DIR/configs directory. 

Here's a link to a short video showing the process.

2. Solutions WITH external properties files

This process is more involved because you not only have to copy the solution over to the remote server, you ALSO MUST COPY OR CREATE THE EXTERNAL PROPERTIES FILES ON THE REMOTE SERVER. This is one of the important parts that the existing documentation leaves out. The project/solution contains REFERENCES to external properties files, but does not actually contain the properties files themselves nor the properties in those files. This means that you will have to either copy the properties files over to the other server in the correct location or create them in the correct location. This isn't a huge step, but it's one you need to keep in mind when promoting code from TEST to PROD, especially the first time you do it for a particular project/solution.