Multiple OpenOffices for conversion

[khandelwal]

I'm seeking some guidance on how I should proceed. We use openoffice from a Java program to covert documents to pdf. I'm using open office 3.x

In our particular setup, we need the following:

1. customer facing open office converter (uses open office to do conversions, returns results right away).
2. on the same machine, in another JVM, we would have: a batch processing open office converter.

I do not want the customer facing converter to be affected (slowed down) in any way by the batch processing converter.

I've been looking at perhaps starting two instances of open office, one for the customer facing version, and one for the batch processing version. This appears to be non-trivial. However, there appear to be multiple bits of advice on the forums and in bugs.

For example, issue (http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=95411) states that one should start two connectable instances.

However, I think that I really need two instances started (and in other posts, people have claimed that this is unstable) so that the batch processing instance doesn't affect the customer facing one.

So, my question is: with openoffice 3.x how would you approach this?

[mnasato]

You can start separate OOo instances passing a different UserInstallation for each one. See this blog entry for the details.