Using an existing Content Database

There might be situations in which you want to use an existing MarkLogic Database as the content-db for your Roxy app. You could have two apps that make up a small chain. Or you can have multiple apps, all reusing data from the same content-db. You typically want to prevent the different apps from all bootstrapping and changing the database settings, causing all kinds of risks on conflicts and such, or worse, accidental dropping of the entire Database, because one of the apps was wiped.

In situations like that, it is usually wise to have only one app or project being responsible for that Database. All other will want to use it, but otherwise touch it as little as possible. One simple way to do that, is by changing deploy/build.properties for the other apps/projects, and change the value of content-db to the name of the Database you'd like to reuse. Additionally you need to edit deploy/ml-config.xml, and remove the entire <database> section for the content-db. That is the part that typically starts with:

<database>
  <database-name>${content-db}</database-name>
  <forests-per-host>${content-forests-per-host}</forests-per-host>

and ends with:

  </element-attribute-word-lexicons>
</database>
<!--Create Application Modules Database-->

Just remove it entirely, and bootstrap and wipe will not attempt to create, change, or wipe it.