Sakai is built with the Java programming language. Java bytecode runs on multiple platforms without modifications. There are Java Virtual Machines available for Macintosh, Windows PC, Linux, and many other platforms. To run the demo version of Sakai, you must have a version of the Java Development Kit — currently Java 1.6 JDK — installed on your machine.
The demo is great for individual exploration. However, when you deploy for more than a few users, you will need to connect to a more substantial database such as MySQL or Oracle. The Foundation-supported quality assurance teams have thoroughly tested both MySQL and Oracle infrastructures under the numerous sites and variations, and over a whole series of versions.
Changing from one database to another requires only eight lines of configuration in the sakai.properties
text file, as you'll see later in the chapter, so there's a clear path from demo to mid-sized production. (The route to large-scale deployments involves...