3.2. Creating databases

Create 2 databases: one for IDM datasource, and one for JCR datasource (you can use the same database for both).
- If you do not need to support specific characters, it is recommended to use the character set latin1 and the collation latin1_general_cs (as eXo JCR is case sensitive). For example, in MySQL:
  CREATE DATABASE plf_jcr DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 DEFAULT COLLATE latin1_general_cs
- If you need to support specific characters, it is recommended to use the character set utf8 and the collation utf8_bin (as eXo JCR is case sensitive). For example, in MySQL:
  CREATE DATABASE plf_jcr DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_bin
Grant a user the right to access the databases. The user should be allowed to access remotely from where eXo Platform is hosted.
For example, use the grant command in MySQL:
```
grant all on _$dbname_.* to '_$username_'@'_$IP_' identified by '_$password_';
```
- $IP is your app server host name that accepts wildcard (for example, 192.168.1.% = all IPs on 192.168.1.x network).
- $username and $password are credentials that eXo Platform will use to connect to the databases (for example, 'dbnameuser').
Download the JDBC driver for Java.
Tip
Normally you can find out an appropriate driver for your JDK from your database vendor website. For example, for MySQL: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/, and for Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/jdbc/index-091264.html.

Particularly to MySQL, if you use utf8 character set for JCR database, you need to set JCR dialect to MySQL-UTF8, by editing gatein/conf/configuration.properties (Tomcat), or standalone/configuration/gatein/configuration.properties (JBoss) to have the following:

gatein.jcr.datasource.dialect=MySQL-UTF8