Setting Up Windows Service Dependencies – Oracle XE Example

Did you ever need a Windows service to startup, but only after other services are running? The LiveCycle Turnkey installation creates a dependency so that MySQL starts before JBoss. What if your application requires another DB such as Oracle XE to be running first?

Unfortunately, Oracle XE does not install this dependency, so that if you setup the Oracle XE DB to automatically start (the default installation), everything will be running, but you can’t access the XE DB. This can happen when the DB starts up before the TNS Listener, so that the TNS Listener doesn’t realize there’s a database running.

This Knowledge Base Article from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193888 describes how to do setup these dependencies, but the text does not match up with what I see in Windows 2003 EE R2, so I have attached some screen shots.

  1. Start->Run->regedit
  2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\OracleServiceXE (swap OracleServiceXE for your service)
  3. Create a new Multi-String Value, by right-clicking on the background in the folder’s contents
    create_multi-string_value.png
  4. Change the name of the value to “DependOnService”
  5. Edit the value (right-click and select modify) and add the services that should be started before this one. You need to enter the service name exactly as it appears in the Windows Services application. For Oracle XE, it is the “OracleXETNSListener” service.
    edit_value.png
  6. Click OK
    change_multi-string_value_name.png
    View larger image.
  7. Verify that it was updated properly by checking the service properties
    service_properties.png

    service_dependencies.png

4 Responses to Setting Up Windows Service Dependencies – Oracle XE Example

  1. Pingback: Running LiveCycle on JBoss as a 64-bit Windows Service | LiveCycle Product Blog

  2. SEO-Web designer London says:
    February 16, 2011 at 2:46 pm

    I am very interested in this apprach. I am working with oracle UCM and need to knwo if this can be used in our development environment

    thanks

  3. Ganesh says:
    March 18, 2011 at 5:23 am

    this adds dependency but it does allow dependent service to start even if parent service is not running

  4. Michel says:
    May 14, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    Thanks!

    This solves the problem in windows server 2003!