WebCenter PS3 Launch Demo Preview

If you have visited oracle.com lately, you may have noticed the banner ad about our web cast, officially launching WebCenter 11g Patch Set 3. To whet your appetite, here is a screen shot of the portal we built for the launch. The demo walks you through some of the key aspects of this portal, including personalization, analytics, social services, content integration, business user editing experience, as well as the developer’s view.

If you want to find out how you can get a hold of this sample, tune in on Wednesday, February 2nd, at 10:00am pst.

Hidden Gems for Developers in WebCenter Patch Set 3

We have made a handful of improvements to the developer experience for WebCenter Portal developers. Let’s review three of them, in no particular order.

WebCenter-specific artifacts in the EL Editor

In PS3 we have grouped the WebCenter-specific EL constructs under a dedicated node in the EL Editor, making it very easy to access the security, navigation, or personalization context from EL. When it comes to the EL Editor, it’s very easy to get lost, hopefully this makes it easy to reference the various WebCenter artifacts.

New resource catalog: WebCenter Portal Catalog

We created a new resource catalog for portal developers, containing basic components that we expect many extranet and public facing web sites to leverage. On one hand, as a best practice, this is a list of light-weight components we recommend you to use, on the other hand it’s a convenient way to access these components. And best of all, you can expand this list or shape it the way you like by editing this resource catalog – or even by creating a new one.

WebCenter task flows: almost 100

One of the frequent questions we get from prospects and customers is “how many portlets/components does WebCenter have”. Well – if you qualify this question and ask “how many out of the box task flows does WebCenter provide in its development environment”, I know the answer to this one: 90. Here are a few screen shots for your review.

WebCenter 11g Patch Set 3 Released

While formally only a patch set, from a feature perspective WebCenter 11g Patch Set 3 is a major mile stone with fundamental new capabilities. This version has been in the works for over a year and we’re very excited about it. If there’s only one thing to note about this release, than it would be the following:  this is the converged portal platform with support for broad portal and extranet site use cases and incorporates the best features from all of the previously acquired portal products, including WebLogic Portal, WebCenter Interaction, fka: ALUI (fka: Plumtree), as well as Oracle Portal.

In this release WebCenter Spaces has evolved big time; but the new features that the WebCenter Portal Framework offers are more significant than ever before (more about it soon).

Main themes of the release:

• Portals & Sites
• Team & Social
• Enterprise Mashups
• Content Management
• Personalization
• Search & Discovery
• Desktop Integration & Mobile
• Analytics & Management

If you want to learn more about this release (including download, documentation, white papers), your best starting point is the WebCenter home page on OTN: http://webcenter.oracle.com and the Release Highlights page.

WebCenter Avitek Sample Portal

The Avitek Sample Portal is a custom portal built using Oracle WebCenter 11g Release 1 and WebCenter Web 2.0 Services. In addition to the source of the sample, it also comes with a Developer’s Guide.
Avitek is intended for customers and partners who want to start building custom WebCenter portals quickly. If you have JDeveloper and the WebCenter 11g extension, you’ll have Avitek running in less than 10 minutes. If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll have it running in less than an hour.
Avitek focuses primarily on site management, content driven templates, and customizable pages. It leverages WebCenter Services for page creation, page customization, and content integration. It showcases different approaches to building site navigation and publishing content.

Important Note: If you are using WebCenter 11gR1 Patch Set 1, due to a bug (to be fixed in the next release) you have to do the following work-around:

1. Shutdown JDeveloper
2. Copy Avitek/SiteModel/deploy/avitek-site-model.jar to
$ORACLE_HOME/jdeveloper/jdev/lib/patches directory
3. Restart JDeveloper

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.

5 Best Practices for Modernizing your Enterprise Portal

Ann Fellman and Ajay Gandhi from Oracle share tips in this live web cast on how to increase the productivity of your enterprise portal and answer your questions during the live Q&A.

Here is the overview from the session:

Modern enterprise portals offer superior user experience, greater individual and team productivity along with reduced development and support costs. Learn how to get more business value out of your existing enterprise portal using 5 proven best practices. This webcast will show how you can modernize your portal through optimized security & personalization, improved application integration, enterprise content management, Web 2.0 and support of the most important industry standards.

Oracle OpenWorld Presentations Available Online

If you missed any of the OpenWorld presentations or simply want to take another look at them, you can do so now: all our presentations are available for download in PDF.

Keynote
	Thomas Kurian’s Keynote Enterprise 2.0, business intelligence, content management, and enterprise portal technologies are revolutionizing the way we find and share information at work. These powerful new technologies can make your organization more innovative, your employees more productive, and your executives better informed. In his keynote, Start in the Middle: The Integration Point, Thomas Kurian showcases how you can gain a competitive edge by using a number of new Oracle products.
Presentations
	Oracle WebCenter and Beyond: Oracle’s Vision, Strategy, and Road Map for User Interaction (S299317) The road map of Oracle WebCenter promises breakthrough capabilities and services for achieving higher levels of personal and team productivity throughout your enterprise. Topics covered in this presentation include using Oracle WebCenter to integrate new composite UIs into your service-oriented architecture. Attend this session to learn how your developers and knowledge workers can work together to create and evolve more-effective social networks.
	Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0 (S297844) From enterprise content management to composite applications, to content-enabled vertical applications (CEVAs), the promise and challenge of Web 2.0 abound. This presentation explores the possibilities and best practices for incorporating the Web 2.0 technology and working style into your strategic enterprise systems.
	Oracle Applications Unlimited and Web 2.0: You Can Have It Now (S299323) End users familiar with Web 2.0 phenomena like blogs, wikis, and social networks are asking when enterprise-ready versions of these features will become part of core business processes. Oracle is already integrating Web 2.0 into its next generation of applications, but in the interim, you can deploy this technology by using Oracle WebCenter. In this session, see how Oracle WebCenter can integrate enterprise-class Web 2.0 capabilities into existing enterprise applications today.
	Web 2.0 in the Enterprise: Balancing Participation and Security (S299325) Today’s enterprise applications built with Web 2.0 technologies and services are highly collaborative and enable a rich set of interactions among users, processes, and content. Due to their eagerness to deploy such applications, architects may tend to overlook critical security considerations. This session discusses the security framework leveraged by Oracle WebCenter to address these issues and explains how the architecture facilitates a balance between participation and security.
	Build Composite Applications Your End Users Will Actually Use (S299480) Oracle WebCenter’s application framework takes user interaction to the next level, and Oracle SOA Suite binds Enterprise 2.0 applications. Both are being driven and refined by real-world needs of Oracle Fusion Applications. This session explains the best practices for orchestrating Oracle WebCenter’s framework and SOA together to present the most compelling user interaction experience possible and ensure quick and willing adoption by your business users.
	Build an Enterprise 2.0 Social Network with Oracle WebCenter (S299489) Today’s organizations seek to maximize the productivity of individuals as well as teams. To that end, enterprises are seeking an integrated, collaborative Enterprise 2.0 environment that exploits the creativity and intellect of every user and group. Oracle WebCenter supports the development of virtual workspaces in which people work together in social networks, supported by a set of intuitive services that enable a wide range of users to come together and share information and interactions.
	Oracle Composer Puts Your Users in the Driver’s Seat with Multilayered Customizations (S299506) How can a unified platform for user interaction be finely tailored to meet your company’s diverse needs? Can one platform be simple enough that your users can personalize their own dashboards and your project managers can customize their own task flows and still allow developers to customize complex business processes? In this session, learn how Oracle Composer, part of Oracle WebCenter, meets both these requirements, using an XML metadata-based, multilayered, extensible approach.
	Increase Business Agility: Give Your Users the Web 2.0 Services They Need Now (S299510) Web 2.0 adoption in the enterprise is being driven by the need for increased business agility and is being limited by the need for integration with existing content stores and information sources. To be widely adopted in a modern enterprise, Web 2.0 services need to support the systems and standards that constitute the existing IT infrastructure. This session showcases how to add Web 2.0 services to your enterprise IT systems by use of Oracle’s standards-based developer framework, Oracle WebCenter.
	Transform Your Siebel Data with Web 2.0: Use Oracle WebCenter to Create a True Next-Generation Interface (S299324) Your end users keep asking for Web 2.0 features when they interact with their data from Oracle’s Siebel data, but how can you make this happen? This session steps you through a simple process to blend the Siebel applications and Oracle WebCenter environment to provide your users a true next-generation interface. Now.
	A Web 2.0 Developer’s Dream Realized: Ultimate Component Reusability (S299492) The popularity of JavaServer Faces as a development framework can be attributed to its simplicity and ease of use. In this presentation, you will learn how Oracle Application Development Framework task flows elevate JavaServer Faces to the next level. The session discusses the pros and cons of portlets and task flows; the JavaServer Faces Portlet Bridge (JSR 301); and how to use task flows and portlets as building blocks to create rich, highly flexible Web 2.0 mashups.
	Guide to the Oracle Portal Road Map for Oracle WebLogic Portal Customers (S298501) This session provides Oracle WebLogic Portal customers with a future road map and information about product releases within the context of Oracle WebCenter Suite. It reviews the new features of the upcoming Oracle WebLogic Portal release and discusses interoperability with other Oracle products and technologies.
	Road Map and Future Directions for BEA AquaLogic User Interaction Customers (S298498) In this session, BEA AquaLogic User Interaction customers will learn about the product’s ongoing development and support and how components of BEA AquaLogic User Interaction (now known as Oracle WebCenter Interaction) are being integrated into Oracle WebCenter Suite. This session covers the planned road map and interoperability with other Oracle products.
	Deploying a Web-Oriented Architecture with Oracle WebCenter, Oracle WebLogic Portal, and Oracle WebCenter Interaction (S298499) Web-oriented architecture is a pattern for creating applications you can extend with lightweight techniques inside and outside a firewall. Twitter, Facebook, Amazon S3, and Google Search use WOA to attract third-party applications. Learn how to implement WOA applications, using Oracle technologies to expose your UI components and data services. This presentation covers the technologies (HTTP, REST, POX, and JSON) and techniques for consuming WOA applications in mashups (MS Popfly, Yahoo Pipes), widgets (Google Gadgets), and RIA (Ajax).
	No REST for the Weary: REST APIs and the Activity Stream (S298497) Activity streams provide a powerful way to tap in to what’s going on with people and processes across the enterprise. In this session, find out how easily you can provide your own activity streams. From simple command lines to scripting languages such as PHP, JavaScript, Java, and .NET, this session covers what you need to know to enrich your portlets and standalone applications with real-time feeds.
	Oracle WebLogic Portal: Using the WSRP Standard to Interoperate and Federate Content and User Interfaces (S298500) Achieving a standards-based, federated application architecture is the focus of this session. Oracle WebLogic Portal utilizes the WSRP standard to implement its federation technologies, which enable you to segment your application content and user interfaces in a federated mode. Come learn how to use WSRP to achieve a heterogeneous federated application architecture across various product technology stacks.
	The Art of the Mash: Oracle Ensemble and New Integration Patterns (S298495) REST is proliferating, more logic is being pushed to the browser, and users are assembling their own composite applications. What new integration patterns do these trends imply for the enterprise, and how can you benefit? This session explores the new integration patterns in the enterprise and shows how Oracle Ensemble enables them.
	Give Users What They Want: Web-Based Data Access and Rich Internet Applications (S298502) The same technologies that are used on the consumer Web for developing applications are infiltrating the enterprise. Web-based and RESTful data access APIs such as those found in Oracle WebLogic Portal make it easier to access disparate datasources, and when combined with RIA technologies (Ajax, JavaScript frameworks, Flex), these APIs can have a powerful impact on enterprise Web applications. This session discusses Web 2.0 technologies and shows how you can rationally use them to build the new-style Web applications today’s end users expect.
	Do-It-Yourself IT: Oracle WebCenter Powers the User-Driven Workplace (S298496) If you’re grappling with how best to help users discover, share, and organize information with colleagues to enhance team productivity, this is the session for you. It shows how end users can build collaborative Web applications, leverage social networks, and easily identify experts through new approaches to dynamic search and discovery, content tagging, Web page creation, mashups, and more.
	Enrich Your Portal with Enterprise 2.0 Services (S299482) In this session, learn how to enrich your standards-based portal deployment with preintegrated Web 2.0 services that are enterprise-ready. See how you can benefit from Oracle’s unique understanding of how to create Enterprise 2.0 services that reconcile the opposing needs of user-friendliness and industrial-strength security and scalability.

Competitors, FUD, and the Future

The other day, Vince Casarez, Vice President for Product Management, responsible for the portal products at Oracle, published a post on the official WebCenter blog, http://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter. In the note, titled You can tell how worried a competitor is by how much FUD they spread… Vince makes it clear what we mean by developing and supporting the acquired portal products for at least another 9 years. Then, he goes into details about the products in our Enterprise 2.0 family.

If you’re a WebLogic Portal, Aqualogic User Interaction (WebCenter Interaction), or Oracle Portal customer, this post is for you. Here’s an excerpt:

Let me start here. Oracle has clearly stated that Oracle Portal, Oracle WebLogic Portal, and Oracle WebCenter Interaction & Collaboration (formerly ALUI) will continue to be developed and supported for at the MINIMUM of 9 years. This means that there will be both major and minor releases of these products going forward. And when we get close to this 9 year time horizon, as we do for every product, we’ll survey the customers and extend the time if that’s their recommendation.

And again, if you’re fortunate enough and you’re coming to Oracle OpenWorld to San Francisco next week, you can talk to Vince as well as the experts of each of these products directly.

Portal Related Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 in San Francisco

I created a simple Google Calendar containing the sessions from this year’s Oracle OpenWorld that are related to the Portal, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 technology space. You can use your own RSS reader, iCal, or simply the native HTML calendar of google.

Use the Content Catalog to find other sessions that are of interest to you.

Sunday, September 21

11:45am S299324: Sanjay: Transform Your Siebel Data with Web 2.0: Use Oracle WebCenter to Create a True Next-Generation Interface

11:45am S299504: Jim, Maiko, Brian: Build the Next Generation of Composite Applications with Oracle WebCenter, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0

2:30pm S299712: Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Suite–Enterprise 2.0 at Your Fingertips

2:30pm S300200: Eric: Oracle Fusion Middleware: A Set of Tools for Your Enterprise

4:00pm S301162: Eric: Building Very Rich Portals with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g

Monday, September 22

11:30am S299317: Rahul: Oracle WebCenter and Beyond: Oracle’s Vision, Strategy, and Road Map for User Interaction

11:30am S301790: Eric: Oracle Portal Products (Oracle Portal, Oracle WebCenter Suite, and Products from Stellent and BEA): Which One Should You Use?

1:00pm S298738: Lynn, Jennifer: The Oracle Fusion Development Platform

2:30pm S299492: George, Christina: A Web 2.0 Developer’s Dream Realized: Ultimate Component Reusability

4:00pm S298501: Josh: Guide to the Oracle Portal Road Map for Oracle WebLogic Portal Customers

5:30pm S298423: Terry Olkin: Introducing Oracle Beehive

5:30pm S298498: Ajay: Road Map and Future Directions for BEA AquaLogic User Interaction Customers

Tuesday, September 23

9:00am S298499: Skip, Peter Laird: Deploying a Web-Oriented Architecture with Oracle WebCenter, Oracle WebLogic Portal, and Oracle WebCenter Interaction

11:30am S298497: Bob Fraser: No REST for the Weary: REST APIs and the Activity Stream

11:30am S299712: Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Suite–Enterprise 2.0 at Your Fingertips

1:00pm S298495: The Art of the Mash: Oracle Ensemble and New Integration Patterns

5:30pm S299712: Hands-on Lab: Oracle WebCenter Suite–Enterprise 2.0 at Your Fingertips

Wednesday, September 24

9:00am ADF methodology unconference

9:00am S299480: George, Maiko: Build Composite Applications Your End Users Will Actually Use

11:30am S299325: Manish: Web 2.0 in the Enterprise: Balancing Participation and Security

1:00pm S297844: Vince, Billy Cripe: Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0

1:00pm S298495: Tom Quigley: The Art of the Mash: Oracle Ensemble and New Integration Patterns

1:00pm S299323: Manish: Oracle Applications Unlimited and Web 2.0: You Can Have It Now

1:00pm S300017: Eric: Building Very Rich Portals with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (IOUG)

5:00pm S299506: Revathy, Kundan: Oracle Composer Puts Your Users in the Driver’s Seat with Multilayered Customizations

Thursday, September 25

9:00am S299489: Christian: Build an Enterprise 2.0 Social Network with Oracle WebCenter

9:00am S299563: Rashmi: Integrating Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus with Your Applications

9:00am S300478: Duncan, Sten Vesterli: Choose Your Weapon: An Overview of Oracle Development Tools

10:30am S298639: Ann Fellman: Enterprise 2.0: Best Practices for Winning Management Acceptance and Driving User Adoption

12:00pm S299510: Skip: Increase Business Agility: Give Your Users the Web 2.0 Services They Need Now

1:30pm S298403: Padmaprabodh Ambale: Opening Up Oracle Application Framework Applications Through Web Services and Portlets

1:30pm S298496: Steve Hamrick: Do-It-Yourself IT: Oracle WebCenter Powers the User-Driven Workplace

1:30pm S298500: Marcus: Oracle Weblogic Portal: Using the WSRP Standard to Interoperate and Federate Content and User Interfaces

3:00pm S298502: Eddie: Give Users What They Want: Web-Based Data Access and Rich Internet Applications

Oracle Portal 11g New Features

We’re about to post the updated Oracle Portal Statement of Direction on the Oracle Portal page on OTN. Oracle Portal 11g is part of Fusion Middleware 11g, and will be released at the same time, currently scheduled for the first half of calendar year 2009. Here is the summary of the planned new features in the 11g version:

• Oracle Portal 11g will be integrated with WebLogic Server.
• Extend support for open industry standards:
  • WSRP 2.0 (Web Services for Remote Portlets)
  • JSR 301 (Portlet Bridge for JavaServer Faces)
    • Build new portlets with JSF
    • Turn JSF pages and oracle ADF task flows into standards-based portlets
    • Bring existing JSF applications into Oracle Portal 11g
    • Available with Oracle WebCenter Suite
• Oracle Portal will be able to consume the Enterprise 2.0 services offered by Oracle WebCenter. These services include: Discussions, Wikis, Search, Presence, Instant Messaging, Email, and Document Library.
• Content integration
  • Expose content from 3rd party document management systems in Oracle Portal via portlets (using WSRP 2.0 and JSR 301).
  • Build portlets in JDeveloper that utilize JCR 1.0 (JSR 170) adapters to connect to content management systems.
  • Available adapters (with Oracle WebCenter Suite): Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle Content DB, Oracle Portal, and file system. Additional adapters (Documentum, SharePoint, Lotus Domino) are available from our partners.
• Extend Core Portal Functionality
  • Omniportlet enhancements, including enhanced support for complex Web Services.
  • BPEL-based process content routing & approval
  • Support for new Document Type Declarations: HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and XHTML 1.0 Strict
• Streamline management and administration
  • Performance metrics available in Enterprise Manager interface
  • Improved Lifecycle Support — Export/Import
• Simplify and extend security
• Deeper integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g