All New WebSphere Process Server / Portal Server with Oracle RAC

If you're thinking that you'll get out-of-the-box Oracle RAC support for an IBM WebSphere Process Server or Portal Server installlation, you're sadly mistaken.

All the scripts that are generated by the installation process (for the oracle database) are for a standalone installation and will fail or make your DBA very angry if they are run on one of the RAC nodes!

Well, there's a way out, but you'd have to edit the scripts that these monstrous products generate.

For example:
You'll find a line like this in Portal server scripts:

create tablespace ICMLFQ32 datafile '/oracle/tb/ICMLFQ32_01.dbf' size 300M reuse autoextend on next 10M maxsize UNLIMITED extent management local autoallocate;

you'll have to change it to :

create tablespace ICMLFQ32 datafile size 300M autoextend on next 10M maxsize UNLIMITED extent management local autoallocate;

i.e. remove the location of the datafile specified.

There's another thing that you'd need to do if your using Oracle RAC as the datastore for WebSphere Process and WebSphere Portal Servers... change your JDBC string.

I got this tip from the an IBM developerworks article on Oracle RAC with Process Server

Change your datasource from:

jdbc:oracle:thin:@{hostname}:{port number}:{DBName}

to:

jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS_LIST=
(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST= myoraclehost1.ibm.com)(PORT=1521))
(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST= myoraclehost2.ibm.com)(PORT=1521))
(FAILOVER=on)(LOAD_BALANCE=on)
(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVER=DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME=dbservice)))

I should be posting more gotchas with the IBM stack .... check the 'IBM' tags