July 07, 2016
Sitecore 8.1 has made a few changes to the way you configure your xDB.
In this post I'm going to talk about one change which will likely be useful to all developers who’ve worked with previous versions of Sitecore: How to enable xDB.
If you wanted to enable your xDB on previous versions of Sitecore, one of the steps you needed to take was to look for the Sitecore.Analytics.config file, located on your website's App_Config/Include folder and update the setting Analytics.Enabled value to true. The setting would look like this:
<setting name="Analytics.Enabled" value="true" />
But in Sitecore 8.1 this setting no longer exists.
If you want to accomplish the same behaviour as just described, now you have to edit the Sitecore.Xdb.config and update the setting Xdb.Enabled value to true. The setting should look like this:
<setting name="Xdb.Enabled" value="true" />
By default, this value is set to true. If this setting's value is true and you are still having difficulties collecting data on your analytics I recommend checking out this post with troubleshooting tips by Sitecore MVP Amanda Shiga.
