• Download and install Java Development Kit 8 (see System Requirements for supported variants)
• Stages installation on Windows:
  • Execute Stages installer as administrator (will be sent to you by Stages Support)
• Stages installation on Linux:
  • Install RPM package “sudo rpm -i <stagesrpmpakage>.rpm (RPM pakage will be sent to you by Stages Support). Stages will be installed to ”/opt/stages“ by default. It can be installed to a different location if needed. The path must not contain whitespaces.
  • A user with the name “stages” is needed to allow the command “stages start” to automatically start the Stages search engine. The user needs recursive read and execute permissions on the sub-direcory “elasticsearch” and additionally write permissions on “elasticsearch/data” and “elasticsearch/logs”.
• Database installation with Oracle 11g, 12c or 19c:
• Get Oracle database dump and installation instructions from Stages Support.
• Download Oracle JDBC connector for your Oracle version.
• Copy JDBC connector to ”<stages installation path>/stages/lib“ and rename it to “ojdbc.jar”.
• Database installation with MySQL 8.0:
• Get MySQL database dump from Stages Support.
• Download MySQL JDBC connector (Connector/J 8.0 Platform Independent) and installer for MySQL 8.0.
• Copy JDBC connector to ”<stages installation path>/stages/lib“ and rename the file mysql-connector-java-*-bin.jar to mysql.jar.
• Install MySQL 8.0 (if not already installed):
  • Select Setup Type “Server only”
  • Install MySQL with Config Type “Server Machine”, default encoding “UTF-8” and servicename “mysql80”.
  • Adapt/check the following properties within ”[mysql]“ and ”[mysqld]“ section in my.ini configuration file.
    • Windows: \ProgramData\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0\my.ini
    • Linux: (CentOS) /etc/my.cnf

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysqld]
character-set-server=utf8
max_allowed_packet=500M
transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED
lower_case_table_names=1
sql-mode = "STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION"
default-time-zone="+00:00"

• The default-time-zone parameter needs to be adapted to your servers' location if it is located outside of central europe.
• Restart the mysql service.
• MySQL: Create database user “stages” and grant privileges.
  • Start MySQL console within path ”<MySQL installation path>/bin“: mysql -uroot -p<mysql-root-password>
  • Execute the following commands:

create user 'stages' identified by 'pass';
grant all privileges on *.* to 'stages'@'%';
flush privileges;
exit;

• MySQL: Create database “stages” and import dump file (unzip the file -or- customer specific dumpfile that has been sent to you). All commands need to be executed within path ”<MySQL installation path>/bin“:

mysqladmin -uroot -p<mysql-root-password> create stages
mysql -uroot -p<mysql-root-password> stages <[PATH TO DUMP FILE\stages7_mysql_content.sql]

• MySQL: Establish database connection: Edit ”<Stages installation path>/stages/conf/database.properties“ appropriately like in the following example:

torque.database.default.driver = com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver
torque.database.default.adapter = DBMM
torque.database.default.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/stages?zeroDateTimeBehavior=round&jdbcCompliantTruncation=false
torque.database.default.username = stages
torque.database.default.password = <stages-password>

• Oracle: Establish database connection: Edit ”<Stages installation path>/stages/conf/database.properties“ appropriately like in the following example:

## settings for oracle
torque.database.default.driver=oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
torque.database.default.url=jdbc:oracle:thin:@<IP/hostname>:<port>/<pdb>
torque.database.default.username=<oracle-username>
torque.database.default.password=<oracle-password>

## hint: ensure that torque.database.default.adapter = DBMM is commented out or deleted

• If you are updating from another version, check the release notes for any additional mandatory manual upgrade steps which may be necessary
• Activate the configuration
  • Windows Start Menu: Execute “Programs > Method Park > Stages > Update Configuration”
  • Linux: Execute “stages update”
• Start Stages
  • Windows: Start the services “Stages Search” and then “Stages”
  • Linux: Execute “stages start”

If you want to secure your MySQL connection with SSL you need to provide the server certificate to the MySQL driver. To do this follow these steps:

• Copy the server certificate pem file into the stages conf folder
• Create a Java trust store based on the MySQL server certificate:

$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -importcert -alias MySQLCACert -file ca.pem -keystore truststore.jks -storepass mypassword

• Change the database.properties and append the following to your JDBC url:

&clientCertificateKeyStoreUrl=file:/opt/stages/conf/truststore.jks&useSSL=true&clientCertificateKeyStorePassword=mypassword&enabledTLSProtocols=TLSv1.2

• The complete JDBC url should now look similar like this:

torque.database.default.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/stages?zeroDateTimeBehavior=round&jdbcCompliantTruncation=false&useSSL=true&clientCertificateKeyStoreUrl=file:/opt/stages/conf/truststore&clientCertificateKeyStorePassword=mypassword

If you are using a virus scanner on your Stages server, please exclude all MySQL database files from analysis operations as this might corrupt your database. Also excluding Stages installation directory and Java installation directory might significantly improve Stages performance.

Depending on the desired performance and the purpose of your Stages Server, we strongly suggest to adjust the Java heap space according to the following values:

• Low-range system: 4096 MB or more
• Mid-range system: 8192 MB or more
• High-range system: 16384 MB or more

Please check System Requirements for Stages for detailed information on the range levels.

To adjust the Java heap space settings please proceed as follows:

• Windows:
  • Open file ”<Stages installation path>\stages\config.bat“
  • Modify the red colored setting: set TOMCAT_OPTS=–JvmMx= <RAM in MB>
  • Open a cmd with administrative permissions and navigate to folder ”<Stages installation path>\stages\bin“
  • Reinstall the Stages service: reinstallService.bat
  • Restart Stages service: net stop stages and net start stages
• Linux:
  • Open file ”<Stages installation path>/stages/bin/rc.conf“
  • Modify the red colored value: CONF_TOMCAT_OPTS=”-Xmx <RAM in MB> m -XX:+UseG1GC -XX_-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow“
  • Restart the Stages service: stages restart

If a customer specific metamodel has been migrated from Stages V6 to V7 by a Method Park product consultant, this metamodel will be provided as *.mm file. To install the metamodel please proceed as follows:

• Windows:
  • Copy the *.mm file to directory: ”<Stages installation path>\stages\conf\model“
  • Open a CMD with administrative permissions
  • Stop the Stages service: net stop stages
  • Navigate to folder: ”<Stages installation path>\stages\bin“
  • Execute command: update.bat
  • Restart the Stages service: net start stages
• Linux:
  • Copy the *.mm file to directory: ”<Stages installation path>/stages/conf/model“
  • Stop the Stages service: stages stop
  • Execute command: stages update
  • Restart the Stages service: stages start

If you want to use international UTF-8 charsets (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean), you have to configure Stages to use appropriate fonts for process visualizations and PDF printing. Examples are Arial Unicode MS (subject to add. license conditions) or Source Han Sans (SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE): https://www.methodpark.de/downloads/stages/SourceHanSans-Regular.ttf

Place the custom font in your <Stages installation path>/conf/fonts folder.

Configure font for Stages process visualizations (metamodel: Unified Configuration):

• Make sure the scriptconfig.js in your metamodel is up to date and contains var FONTNAME = availableFontFamilies.getConfiguredFont();
• Open file: ”<Stages installation path>/conf/config.xml“
• Add/adjust the “diagram.font” property to the properties section at the beginning of the file in the following way (the path of the font file is not needed - only the name):

<property name=“diagram.font” value=“Source Han Sans:SourceHanSans-Regular.ttf”/>

• Execute update.bat (Windows) or update.sh (Linux) in ”<Stages installation path>/bin“

Configure font for Stages PDF printing:

• Open file: ”<Stages installation path>/conf/config.xml“
• Add/adjust the “pdf.font.list” property and set the path to the font file in the stages/conf/fonts directory:
  <property name=“pdf.font.list” value=”/opt/stages/conf/fonts/SourceHanSans-Regular.ttf“ />

• Windows:
  • Execute the Stages license installer with administrative permissions on the Stages server.
  • The Stages service will be restarted automatically.
• Linux:
  • Extract the .tar.gz archive to folder ”<Stages installation path>/stages/conf“.
  • Restart the Stages service: stages restart

To encrypt all connections between the users and Stages, we strongly recommend to configure SSL for the Stages server.
In addition to the following guidelines, a detailed guide on how to easily configure SSL with Stages can be found here.

• Ask for a DNS alias for the server, e.g. “stages.company.com”
• Ask for a SSL certificate for the server which refers to the above alias. Depending on your local procedures, this might require creating a certificate request (see https://www.digicert.com/kb/csr-ssl-installation/tomcat-keytool.htm for more info).
• Import the SSL certificate into a keystore (see link above for more info)
• Configure Tomcat to use this SSL certificate (see link above for more info). The relevant Tomcat config file is located in <Stages installation path>/stages/conf/server.xml and the SSL info needs to be configured for each <Connector> section. After updating the config file, run bin/update.sh or bin\update.bat to install it at the correct location.
• To enforce redirection from http to https add the following to conf/web-customer.xml, run bin/update.sh or bin\update.bat and restart Stages service

<security-constraint>
    <display-name>Enforce HTTPS</display-name>
    <web-resource-collection>
        <web-resource-name>stages-public</web-resource-name>
    </web-resource-collection>
    <user-data-constraint>
        <description>Force SSL for all connections.</description>
        <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
    </user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>

For using reports in Stages, you need to add your companies root certificate and all Intermediate certificates (if existing) to the server Java truststore. The Java truststore includes all trusted root certificates. If a report tries to connect via SSL to your Stages server, it will be not executed correctly, because Java does not trust the SSL certificate. It was not issued by a Java trusted certificate authority - included in the Java truststore.

• Import your companies root certificate and all intermediate certificates (if existing) into this file:
  <Java Development Kit Installation Directory>\jre\lib\security\cacerts

(Linux directories may varify)

• Please restart Stages service after applying changes to the Java Trust Store

After successful installation process - Stages is accessible via web browser by URL https://localhost:8443 or http://localhost:8080 (depending on the SSL port)

Log in with the “root” user and the provided password. Click on the “Superuser” link in the bottom left corner of the navigation and change the password to a secure and unique one.

Users

Delete all users except Superuser and Default, especially the demo users.

Workspaces

Delete the workspaces ”Samples“ and ”Proof of Concept“ or move them under ”Archive“.

Groups

Delete all groups starting with “Samples …”.

Further setup

Please contact your Method Park Product Consultant to further adapt the Stages process content for productive usage.