Chapter 2. Feet First: Running the Demo
The demonstration version of Sakai allows administrators, teachers, students, and project workers to experiment with the core features of Sakai and many of the most popular tools.
It also allows evaluators to explore how Sakai can be used to create a rich learning environment. Administrators and implementers alike can easily gain an appreciation of the issues that may affect a production installation of Sakai.
The demonstration is a supportive sandbox in which to learn, because it has more tools enabled than are normally available in a production environment. The demonstration includes almost everything you need to run the program and does not require extensive effort to install. The demonstration is a self-contained environment that includes the application server Tomcat (http://tomcat.apache.org) and Hypersonic SQL (http://hsqldb.org/), an in-memory database that stores changes in text files. The only thing required to run the demo is a copy of a Java JDK.
Every time the community releases a new version of Sakai, the demo version is updated too. In general, the community releases three different packages for the wider audience:
- Demonstration: A standalone package that is easy to install, use, and, if necessary, discard.
- Binary: A pre-built version of Sakai that does not include Apache Tomcat, Java library dependencies, or configuration files. This is the recommended version if you want to just drop the Sakai bundle into a pre-existing Tomcat environment. The binary version is also handy for system administrators who do not want to change their production servers, but would like to test a drop-in replacement for an older version.
- Source code: This release enables developers and quality assurance specialists to examine the working of Sakai in detail. The code also provides working examples of the libraries and practices used in developing Sakai, and of the types of tools that can be developed to run within the Sakai framework.
This chapter describes how to install the demonstration version and then, for the developer with a keen interest in getting his or her hands dirty, describes how to compile Sakai from source. It also identifies jumping-off points for learning more.
After starting up your demonstration server for the first time, you may want to practice creating a project site and a course site. For more details, see Chapter 4,My First Site.