Requirements

OpenVPMS can be installed on either a unix system (most commonly a Ubuntu* server), or a Windows system.  For Windows, for small practices you can install on a desktop or laptop running Windows 7, 8 or 10; for larger practices it may be better to use a Windows Server operating system.

*NOTE: OpenVPMS requires MySQL 5.5, which is included in Ubuntu 14.04. Later releases include MySQL 5.6 or MySQL 5.7 which are only supported via configuration changes.

32 or 64 bit version? Both Java and MySQL are available in 32 and 64 bit versions. For larger systems (where you will want to run MySQL and Tomcat with large memory allocations) you should use the 64 bit versions. Otherwise the 32 bit versions are adequate.

Server Software

• Java Platform, Standard Edition 8
  The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is the minimum requirement. That is, neither the SDK or Server JRE packages are needed.
  See http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
   
• Tomcat 8.x
  See https://tomcat.apache.org/download-80.cgi
  On Windows, select the 32-bit/64-bit Windows Service Installer
  • Tomcat minimum 1024M of memory.  Recommended 2048M.
• MySQL
  MySQL 5.5 is supported natively. MySQL 5.7 may be used with configuration changes.
   
  • MySQL 5.5
    See http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html#downloads

    Download the MySQL Community Server 'Generally Available (GA) Release'.
     

  • MySQL 5.7
    See https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.7.html#downloads
    Download the MySQL Community Server 'Generally Available (GA) Release'.

    The sql_mode must be changed to remove ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY. This is done by configuring the server options file, or via MySQL Workbench.

On Windows, the MySQL installer may require that the Microsoft .Net Framework 4 be installed. This is available from:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=17851
 

NOTE: if you are upgrading from an earlier MySQL release, see the relevant MySQL manual for migrating the MySQL data e.g.:

• MySQL 5.5 Reference Manual - Updating MySQL

• MySQL 5.7 Reference Manual - Updating MySQL
   

MySQL:

• should be on the same host as Tomcat
• should accept connections on port 3306
• include the following lines in my.ini
  max_allowed_packet=16M
  innodb_file_per_table
  character-set-server = utf8
• Minimum Innodb buffer size set to 512M.  

NOTE: If character-set-server is not set to utf8, some characters may not be stored correctly. E.g, μ may be replaced with ?

• MySQL Connector/J JDBC driver
  See http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/5.1.html

    This may be included in the MySQL server installation.

• OpenOffice 4.0.x or higher
  See http://www.openoffice.org/download/

  NOTE: several users have indicated that LibreOffice 5 is not 100% compatible with OpenOffice. Fields may not merge correctly, and documents created in LibreOffice may look different when printed via OpenVPMS.
   

• Locale and Fonts
  For unix systems see Unix Locale and Fonts
  For windows systems see Windows Locale and Fonts

Workstation Software

If you wish to use the External Edit facility then the following software is required on all workstations that will edit documents in OpenVPMS:

• Java Platform, Standard Edition 8
  The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is the minimum requirement. That is, neither the SDK or Server JRE packages are needed.
  See http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
   
• OpenOffice 4.1.2 or higher

See http://www.openoffice.org/download/

Optional Software

• Jaspersoft Studio 6.2.0 or higher
  This is only required to customise document templates.
  See https://community.jaspersoft.com/project/jaspersoft-studio/releases

   

• MySQL Workbench
  This is not required by OpenVPMS itself, but if you are going to do any report development, then you will find that the Workbench’s ability to build and test SQL queries is very useful. You can download it from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench.