How to use Sitecore XP without xDB

This is small blog post about how to configure and use Sitecore XP without xDB. If you have installed Sitecore 8 and you haven’t configured MongoDB then you might face various related to Sitecore.Analytics.MongoDB. You may face issues like package installer is going in infinite loop and item is not converting into Item Bucket. You can always check Sitecore log files for detailed error information. Below steps are required to use Sitecore 8 without xDB:

• Disable Sitecore Analytics. Naviagte to /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Analytics.config and set Analytics.Enabled to false:

  <setting name="Analytics.Enabled" value="false" />

• Comment out analytics related connection strings. Navigate to /App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config and comment out the following connection strings:

<add name="analytics" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/analytics" />
<add name="tracking.live" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_live" />
<add name="tracking.history" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_history" />
<add name="tracking.contact" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_contact" />
<add name="reporting" connectionString="user id=user;password=password;Data Source=(server);Database=Sitecore_Analytics" />

Check Sitecore Knowledge Base article to know more about what features are functional or non-functional or partial functional when xDB is disabled. This article will be updated continuously by Sitecore team.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome. Happy coding!