WebLogic Portal: WSRP Interoperability with the WebCenter Framework Using the JSF Portlet Bridge

Federated Portals Guide – WSRP Interoperability with the WebCenter Framework: This is a very useful part of the WLP documentation discussing the steps you need to take to consume WSRP 2.0 portlets, including the WebCenter Social Computing Services exposed as portlets.

Topics covered:

• Installing the Patch Set
• Consuming WLP Portlets in WebCenter Framework and Oracle Portal Applications
• Consuming WebCenter Framework Portlets in WebLogic Portal
• Configuring Security
• Interportlet Communication Considerations
• Consuming Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Component Portlets

WebCenter Spaces 11g Test Drive

We’re about to make a hosted version of WebCenter Spaces 11g available to our partners and customers. If you are interested in being among the first ones testing WebCenter 11g in our hosted environment, watch Tom Quigley’s brief announcement and request an invitation.

Free WebCenter Book

I’m giving away three copies of the Oracle WebCenter 11g Handbook to the top 3 bloggers/tweeters about Oracle WebCenter during Oracle OpenWorld 2009 (Oct 11-15).

To be considered for the price, all you need to do is post a link to your blog and/or twitter name here as a comment.

The book is scheduled to be released in December 2009. I will announce the winners here and contact them in person to discuss shipping information.

Wiki, Blog, and Discussion Sample Portlets for Oracle Portal

We have new sample wiki, blog, and discussion portlets available for download. The samples use the wiki, blog, and discussion server APIs, giving you examples of the types of functionality you can integrate into your environment.

New White Paper: Exposing WebCenter Services Task Flows as WSRP Portlets and Ensemble Pagelets

We have a new technical white paper published on OTN, written by one of our senior developers, Ken Young, that covers what it takes to expose the WebCenter Social Computing Services (discussions, email documents, etc.) through WSRP 2.0 for consumption in third party portal products. The white paper, titled Exposing WebCenter Services Task Flows as WSRP Portlets and Ensemble Pagelets comes with a sample project that makes it easy for you to follow the steps.

The screenshot below shows consuming the mail and document library task flows in Oracle Portal.

Oracle Portal, WebLogic Portal, WebCenter Interaction (ALUI) customers – this white paper is for you all!

New WebCenter 11g Course Now Available

Many of our customers and partners have been asking for training on Oracle WebCenter. Here is the first one of the WebCenter training series. More to come, stay tuned…

Credit for writing this post and developing and rolling out the class goes to the WebCenter curriculum development team: Istvan Kiss the main developer of the course; Ellen Gravina and Christina Kolotouros.

The WebCenter Curriculum team has recently delivered the first WebCenter 11g course, Oracle WebCenter 11g: Introduction to Custom Applications, to Oracle University. Register now and be one of the first to attend!

This course introduces you to Oracle WebCenter’s components and teaches you how to add these components to any application to create content-rich, collaborative, customizable applications. You’ll start with an ADF application, then enhance it with features from WebCenter Framework, Composer, and Services. Using Oracle JDeveloper with the embedded WebCenter Framework extension, you learn how to add portlets, documents, discussion forums, tags, links, and search to the existing application. You also learn how to enable users to compose and edit WebCenter application pages at run time. Solving the practices results in a small, concise, feature-rich WebCenter application.

The class is offered as a Live Virtual Class (LVC). An LVC is similar to regular instructor-led training classes, except the participants are not located in the same physical place. No travel is necessary! You’ll interact via your Internet connection—you can hear each participant, interact with one another, and see live video of the instructor.

Portal Products at Oracle OpenWorld 2009

We have a new page on OTN that lists all the portal related sessions at this  year’s Oracle OpenWorld. Here is the summary table:

Time	Title	Location
Sunday, October 11, 2009
10:30a	Build Rich, Customizable Enterprise 2.0 Applications Frédéric Desbiens, Fujitsu America & Peter Moskovits, Oracle (ID S309195)	Hilton Hotel, Golden Gate 3
1:15p	Best Practices for Using Oracle WebCenter Services for Oracle Fusion Applications Gangadhar Konduri & Kundan Vyas, Oracle (ID S311632)	Hilton Hotel, Golden Gate 3
2:30p	Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Suite—Enterprise 2.0 at Your Fingertips Martin Deh, Christina Gibb Kolotouros & Peter Moskovits, Oracle (ID S311311)	Hilton Hotel, Continental Ballroom 6
Monday, October 12, 2009
11:30a	Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g: Strategy and Vision for Enterprise Portals Sachin Parashar, Rahul Patel & Maiko Rocha, Oracle (ID S310663)	Moscone S, Rm 104
1:00p	Oracle Universal Content Management As a Content Management System for Oracle WebCenter Marcus Diaz, Ann Fellman & Ryan McVeigh, Oracle (ID S309625)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 2
1:00p	Introducing Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Vince Casarez, Vineet Duggal & George Maggessy, Oracle (ID S311628)	Moscone S, Rm 309
2:30p	Empower Customers: Build a Highly Integrated Context-Rich Support Portal Nam Doan-Huy & Narasimha Rao Kondapaka, Wind River; Ann Fellman, Oracle (ID S309761)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 1
2:30p	Maximizing the Performance of Oracle WebLogic Portal with Oracle Coherence Tim Breeden, Oracle (ID S309816)	Hilton Hotel, Golden Gate 3
4:00p	Oracle WebCenter Services: The REST of the Story Phil Griffin, Pankaj Mittal & Skip Sauls, Oracle (S308918)	Moscone S, Rm 309
4:00p	Oracle WebCenter Suite’s Enterprise Business Dictionary Reduces Time to Value Christina Gibb Kolotouros, Oracle (ID S311629)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 2
5:30p	Enabling Enterprise 2.0 Within the Canadian Cancer-Research Community Wayne Roberts, Canadian Partnership Against Cancer; Scott Reynolds, Deloitte Canada; Ann Fellman & Neil Robertson, Oracle (ID S309096)	Moscone S, Rm 252
5:30p	Announcing the New Release of Oracle WebLogic Portal Josh Lannin, Oracle (ID S309607)	Moscone S, Rm 104
5:30p	Integrate Oracle Coherence*Web Caching with Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle WebLogic Portal Tom Eliason, Jason Howes & Rob Misek, Oracle (ID S309139)	Hilton Hotel, Continental Ballroom 4
5:30p	Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Suite—Enterprise 2.0 at Your Fingertips Martin Deh, Christina Gibb Kolotouros & Peter Moskovits, Oracle (ID S311311)	Hilton Hotel, Continental Ballroom 6
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
11:30a	Getting Up to Speed with Oracle WebCenter Interaction Brian Harrison, Oracle (ID S309879)	Moscone S, Rm 252
1:00p	Successfully Integrating Security and Enterprise Portals Brian Lucas & Jay Taylor, Chick-Fil-A; Manish Devgan, Oracle (ID S310638)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 2
2:30p	Oracle WebCenter Spaces: Enterprise 2.0 in Action Manish Devgan & Christian Hauser, Oracle (ID S308913)	Moscone S, Rm 252
2:30p	Experiences with Oracle WebCenter 11g: Implementing SOA with a User Interface Peter Ebell & Lucas Jellema, AMIS (ID S310451)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 2
2:30p	Hands-on Lab: Building Collaborative Portals for Oracle Applications by Using Oracle WebCenter Nabin Bilas, Narayan Chintalapati, Anirudh Pandit & Nishit Rao, Oracle (ID S311732)	Marriott Hotel, Golden Gate A3
4:00p	Enhance the Usability of Your Oracle Applications Through Composite Applications Jim Powell, ExoConsultants; Sachin Agarwal & Vinod Murthy, Oracle (ID S310611)	Moscone S, Rm 252
4:00p	Oracle Portal 11g New Features, Interoperability, and How to Upgrade Sanjay Kwatra, Nagesh Patange & Bala Shanmugasundaram, Oracle (ID S310626)	Moscone S, Rm 305
4:00p	Client-Side Web Development with Oracle WebLogic Portal/Oracle WebCenter Using REST and Ajax Chris Bales & Tim Breeden, Oracle (ID S309788)	Hilton Hotel, Yosemite C
5:30p	Creating Composite Applications with Oracle’s Enterprise 2.0 for Oracle Applications Markus Zirn, Oracle (ID S309989)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 2
5:30p	Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Spaces Manish Devgan, Christina Gibb Kolotouros & Christian Hauser, Oracle (ID S311709)	Marriott Hotel, Golden Gate A2
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
10:15a	Hands-on Lab: Using Oracle Universal Content Management with Oracle WebLogic Portal Alan Baer, Chris Bales & Marcus Diaz, Oracle (ID S311762)	Marriott Hotel, Golden Gate A2
11:45a	Hands-on Lab: Seamlessly Integrate Enterprise 2.0 into Oracle WebCenter Interaction Brian Harrison, Oracle (ID S311711)	Marriott Hotel, Golden Gate A2
1:00p	Introduction to Enterprise 2.0 and How It Can Help You Ajay Gandhi, Oracle (ID S310654)	Moscone S, Rm 236
1:00p	Enhanced Usability of Oracle Applications with Web 2.0: Technical Insight Sachin Agarwal & Nadia Bendjedou, Oracle (ID S311588)	Moscone West L2, Room 2005
1:45p	Enterprise 2.0 in Action: Strategies for Successful Deployments Andy Mulholland, Capgemini &Vince Casarez, Oracle (ID S311631)	Moscone S, Rm 236
Thursday, October 15, 2009
9:00a	Back-End Your Oracle WebLogic Portal with Oracle Universal Content Management Alan Baer & Billy Cripe, Oracle (ID S309996)	Moscone S, Rm 252
9:00a	Optimizing Performance of Your SOA, Portal, and Java Composite Applications Glen Hawkins & Rajiv Taori, Oracle, Pragnesh Panchal, Equinix (ID S308100)	Marriott Hotel, Salon 7
10:30a	Turbocharging the Performance of Your Oracle WebLogic Portal Application Glen Hawkins, Mark McGill & Prakash Menon, Oracle (ID S308128)	Moscone S, Rm 309
1:30p	Integrating Microsoft SharePoint Content into Your Oracle WebCenter Applications Marcus Diaz & Nicolas Pombourcq, Oracle (ID S309634)	Moscone S, Rm 252
3:00p	Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Spaces Manish Devgan, Christina Gibb Kolotouros & Christian Hauser, Oracle (ID S311709)	Marriott Hotel, Golden Gate A2

Oracle Magazine Article: Turn Applications into Portlets with the JSF Portlet Bridge (JSR 301)

Vanessa Wang from the Oracle Fustion Middleware Documentation team published an excellent article in the September 2009 issue of the Oracle Magazine, walking through the steps of turning an ADF task flow into a portlet. The article comes with a sample project that you can use as a starting point for your experiment.

New WebCenter Extension for JDeveloper Fixes Design Time Memory Issues

There’s a new WebCenter Extension available that you can install very quickly and easily through JDeveloper’s Help > Check for Update. To confirm that the new version is installed, check the extension version through Help > About. Look for extension version: 11.1.1.1.0.090820.0735.

The updated extension contains fixes for a number of issues; most importantly the incorrect MaxPermSize setting that the WebCenter Extension injected on the project level. This value caused conflicts with the Integrated WebLogic Server settings specified in the SetDomainEnv shell script.

As a result of this fix you will not run out of memory after a few runs of your WebCenter application.

Regardless of whether you do or don’t have the WebCenter Extension already installed, it is safe to install the new version.

Bonus: if you want to download the extension offline and install it off of your file system, here you can get a hold of all the Oracle Fusion Middleware extensions, including the SOA Composite Editor and the Team Productivity Center.
Important note: If you choose to download the WebCenter extension from OTN directly, be sure that you DO NOT extract the extension zip file. Point JDeveloper’s Help > Check for Update to the downloaded zip file directly.

Isn’t it nice to see the JDeveloper extension model work when quick fixes need to be released?

Oracle WebCenter 11g Handbook in the Works: Free Preview

Towards the end of the year (December 2009) in the Oracle Press series McGraw-Hill releases our new book about the WebCenter Framework and Services, titled Oracle WebCenter 11g Handbook: Build Rich, Customizable Enterprise 2.0 Applications.

Here is an excerpt from the description:

The book provides in-depth information on WebCenter concepts, architecture, design, and implementation. You will learn how to integrate content from document management systems, add and manage runtime customization capabilities, and integrate with other applications.

The co-authors are Philipp Weckerle, currently working as a sales consultant in Austria; with Philipp we used to be peers on the WebCenter Product Management team, and Frédéric Desbiens living in Quebec, Canada who is working for Fujitsu Consulting.

And here is the best: McGraw Hill made available the draft of the Runtime Customization chapter as a free preview.