In the process of installing i2b2 from the source distributions, I have compiled a few suggestions for improving the installation documentation.

1. The "Required Software" section of the "Prerequisites" chapter in each of the Cell installation guides should be deleted and replaced simply with "This Application Cell requires that the Hive be installed according to the Hive Installation Guide." Currently, the reiteration of the JDK/Jboss/Tomcat/etc installation process could confuse the less informed user.

2. In the aforementioned "Required Software" sections, some guides refer to a CVS source code repository. This information should be added to the Hive Installation along with details about the CVSROOT, CVS_RSH and other CVS client configuration and credentials to actually access the CVS repository. As it stands, the information is incomplete.

3. Most documents contain inconsistencies in the example web service URL, datastore configuration or other property settings which can confuse the less informed user. For example, the Data Installation Guide initially suggests the database user "i2b2demodata" and password "i2b2demodata" in section 2, but subsequently shows password "i2b2demodata_pswd" in section 2.4, and actually uses "i2b2demodata_pswd" in the i2b2demodata-13.zip distribution. These inconsistencies should be corrected.

4. Related to #3, the source distribution should work "out of the box" if the installation instructions are followed to the letter with no changes to the defaults (assuming ports are available, Jboss/Tomcat are installed into the suggested directories, etc.).