OpenInsight running on 64-bit Servers

Did you know that there is no need to wait for 64-bit OpenInsight to begin taking advantage of deploying to 64-bit servers, such as Windows 2008? Whilst not officially supported as formal testing continues, there are already several OpenInsight systems running on 64-bit servers.

Following a support thread with one client recently, I thought that it might be useful to post some useful information on the topic, even though this is in the WORKS forum on the main Revelation web site.

There are primarily two main points to note:

1. To run OpenInsight you will need to ensure that you include the OpenInsight registry settings in the 32-bit virtual (WOW64) registry.
   
2. If you are planning on using OpenInsight’s OEngineServer service (SocketServer, OECGI2), then you must ensure that you install 32-bit Java for OpenInsight to use and not the 64-bit version, otherwise the SocketServer will fail. In the recent case, this meant downgrading Java from version 6 (64-bit) to version 5 (32-bit).

Once correctly configured, OpenInsight (both desktop and web) should run without any problems. However, it is highly advisable to ensure that you are using the Universal Driver 4.5 (Windows) and a late version 8 or 9.x of OpenInsight.

In addition, there is a useful MSDN article entitled 32-bit and 64-bit Application Data in the Registry that you should refer to, as well as searching for ‘32-bit applications 64-bit server’ in the Microsoft resource and please don’t forget to search the Revelation WORKS forum for real world help as well.

NOTE: This posting will be updated as more information is made available to me. Please also use the comments facility in this posting to post your hints tips and experiences with configuring OpenInsight on 64-bit machines. Please remember to include your version of OI.