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We’re thinking about downgrading our Alfresco Enterprise 3.4.1 to Alfresco Community.

I’m used to Alfresco Enterprise, but I have no experience with Community version.

We’re using EMC, Alfresco Explorer and our own development based on Web Services API and Foundation API.

I’m worried about database migration. Could I simply configure Alfresco Community 3.4.e to use our Oracle Database for Alfresco Enterprise 3.4.1? Is the schema compatible for both Community and Enterprise distributions? Which version of Alfresco Community should I use? 3.4.e? What is the downgrade path between distributions? Is there any kind of correspondence between versions of both distributions?

Any downgrade experience, guide or any related information will be welcomed.

ROMANIA_engineer
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virilo
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    Please do not use 3.4.e Community for production. That release was intended only as a preview release to show the Activiti workflow engine. 3.4.d is the latest stable release of Community Edition for the 3.4 code line. – Jeff Potts Jun 26 '12 at 16:46

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The Alfresco Community Edition is open source, and works with a fully open source stack. Your DB options are PostGreSQL (recommended) or MySQL.

Alfresco Enterprise supports the open source databases that Community supports, PostGreSQL and MySQL, as well as a few proprietary databases too. You can look at the Database Configuration page for more information. Support for Oracle databases is only available in Enterprise.

If you want to keep paying Oracle all that money for your database licenses, then you'll need to continue to pay a tiny fraction of that cost to Alfresco for an Enterprise License. Community, being open source, only supports a fully open source stack, so you can't use Community with your uber expensive proprietary database!

If you were using an open source database like PostGreSQL or MySQL, then you might be able to do the switch as part of an upgrade. Enterprise Service Packs (eg 3.4.1) are normally newer than the equivalent community release from that series (Community gets the bug fixes on Head). Moving from a 3.4.x enterprise service pack back to a 3.4 community wouldn't be recommended, but moving from 3.4.x enterprise to a 4.x community might work. However, that's not a tested migration path, so you could well be on your own... Alfresco QA tests community -> newer community, enterprise -> newer enterprise, and community upgrading to enterprise, which are the supported paths.

Gagravarr
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  • Don't underestimate the powers of the ... Oracle side! ;) ... No really ... **The bigger the company and the bigger the cost-value or risk-value factor of it's used software is, the more advantages usually(!) highly advanced, payed and well supported software has!** Don't judge too quick or get me wrong ... **I love PG and use it wherever I can**, but it really is far behind in certain aspects. Just one example with aggregate functions, mat. views, optimization (that I don't find so advanced or far from normal usage scenarios): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26237463/26237464#26237464 – Andreas Covidiot Feb 16 '17 at 09:56
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This question is similar with this one about difference between Community and Enterprise version You can not use Oracle database for Community version. It is only available for Enterprise. There is not downgrade path for any Alfresco versions. If you are using Enterprise 3.4.2 try to use the same Community version.

Community
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drndivoje
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  • Thank you very much for your response. I’ve read on http://www.alfresco.com/es/products/networks/community/ that Community version uses all databases supported by Hibernate including Oracle database. – virilo Jun 24 '12 at 17:22
  • See the [Database Configuration page](http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Database_Configuration) - Oracle is not supported on Community, only MySQL and PostGreSQL are – Gagravarr Jun 26 '12 at 05:21
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    Actually, there is Alfresco customization that provides Community version to work with Oracle http://forge.alfresco.com/gf/project/oracle/ but is is not recommended for production environment. – drndivoje Jun 26 '12 at 08:00
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I searched the web for possibilities of a downgrade from enterprise to community version, too. What I found is the answer "You may be able to downgrade, however that is never supported or tested."

When downgrading, you have to keep in mind that the community version X usually has more functionalities than the enterprise version with the same version number.

So, downgrading is experimental. I have already seen log files where the downgrade failed.

Maybe it is an option for you to export all content and import this ACP file on the new system with the community version?

Claudia
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Please read your contract carefully. Support and Licensing might not be the same thing in your case. If you don't want to pay anymore to Alfresco, you might be entitled to keep using your current enterprise version, but you would not longer have support. Before considering downgrading, check your contract. If in the future you want to get support and upgrade again, it might just be easier to do it with your current Alfresco Enterprise version.

But, as I said, it depends on your agreement with Alfresco.

luiscolorado
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Migration of the Alfresco repo database is no fun at all. There is no official way switching databases and in 3.x version you may have serialized objects which could be stored by hibernate db specific. This changed a little when Alfresco removed most of hibernate dependencies after 3.4. It may be an option to migrate to 4.0 EE first, migrate the db to postgres (which is closer to oracle than mysql) and finally upgrade to Alfresco Community 4.2.f (latest version with Web Services API). This may be a lot of work (even in your code) but should work.

Here in Germany it is legaly problematic to limit software usage in time if you sell a support subscription (at least for the old contracts you may have) so customers here can request support for a time unlimited EE license key before canceling the subscription contract. I recommend you go this way and update your old 3.4 to the latest 3.4.x or 4.x enterprise version available and stay on Oracle db if you don't care these costs. This step should be done anyway ;-)

Heiko Robert
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I have done it before in order to create a development environment in my local machine,

First, you cannot use Oracle database so you have to use postgresql (recommended) or MySql, exporting and importing the database is not recommended, so you have to create the repository hierarchy and fix the rules, etc., then copy all custom jars (jobs, actions, workflows...) and library from the lib folder to the new one,

If you are using an external application based on alfresco uuids, make sure you updated the uuids after creating the repositories and rules

Ismail MANAREDDINE
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