Create the ReliaSoft Database (if Applicable)

If you already have a database that the website will use, skip ahead to Update the Configuration File.

Plan for Your Implementation

To create a new ReliaSoft database, you’ll need to run the XFRACAS admin utility (which resides on the web server) from a Windows user account that has the following permissions:

• For SQL Server implementations, you must be able to create objects under the default database owner (dbo) schema. Be prepared to specify the server and database names.
• For Oracle implementations, you must be able to create a database. Be prepared to specify a port, host, service name or SID, schema and password.

Note: If you are using Oracle 19c with a pluggable database (PDB), the service name must be fully qualified — e.g., [PDBName].[db_domain].

Created Admin Accounts

During this process, the admin utility automatically creates two new user accounts for you — one for SEP and ReliaSoft desktop applications and another for XFRACAS — that use your Windows login and provide full admin permissions for those applications. The XFRACAS account is a special, IT/admin-only account for tasks such as updating database tables, rolling out new permissions to other admin users, performing bulk data imports (so imported records are not assigned to a specific user), etc. It is invisible to regular users and does not count against the number of users allowed by your XFRACAS license.

Future Upgrades and Ongoing IT / Maintenance Tasks

We recommend performing upgrades and ongoing IT/admin tasks from the same Windows account that you used to create the database (which, by default, has the database permissions required for all ReliaSoft applications). If you cannot identify a single person in your organization who will be available to perform these tasks — both now and in the future — we recommend establishing a shared service account for this purpose.

Note that, even if you created the database from a personal user account, you can still create a shared account to use for future upgrades:

• For SEP and desktop applications, use the admin utility to create additional accounts that are assigned to the “admin” security group.
• For XFRACAS, use the website’s Admin tools (Admin > Configure > Security > Users) to change the domain\username of the account that was created automatically.

Instructions for upgrading XFRACAS are provided in the Install Update guide that comes with your upgrade package.

Create or Upgrade the Database

1. Log in to Windows with an appropriate account for your implementation. (Alternatively, you can run the admin utility as that account in step 2).
2. From Start, search for “XFRACAS 2021 Admin” and open the admin utility.
3. Click either New Enterprise Database or Upgrade Enterprise Database and enter the details required to create or upgrade the database. For custom SQL Server or Oracle connections, you will need to provide a valid connection string.

Assign Roles in SQL Server for the Application Service Account

Finally, if you created a new database on SQL Server, you must make sure the application service account (i.e., the account that the application will use to connect to the database) has the required roles assigned in SQL Server. For requirements, see Establish a Service Account for the Application.