WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET – Video Series

The PS3 version of the WSRP Producer for .NET (install guide) is available for download.

The Oracle WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET provides a means for developers and administrators to service-enable new and existing ASP.NET applications through the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standard. It also unlocks Web Parts to standards based portals by exposing them directly as WSRP components. Now enterprises can take advantage of departmental resources directly.

Product manager, Bob Fraser posted a 2-minute overview of the WSRP Producer for .NET. In addition to Bob’s intro, here are a few more demos as well.

Developer Overview

SharePoint Document Library

SharePoint Wiki Library

Is JSR 168 Not Supported by WebCenter Patch Set 3?

This question may came up when you try to build a JSR 168 portlet or attempt to open one in JDeveloper 11g R1 PS3. In the latter case what happens is that your portlet gets automatically upgraded to a JSR 286 portlet. Given that JSR 286 supersedes JSR 168, most of the time this doesn’t cause problems. However, if for some reason you HAVE to create or edit a JSR 168 portlet without upgrading it, you’ll need to use a Patch Set 2 or earlier JDeveloper for it (or any other tool supporting JSR 168 portlets).

Despite the fact that JDeveloper automatically upgrades your portlets, deploying JSR 168 portlets to the Fusion Middleware 11g Patch Set 3 is fully supported.

This topic is covered by the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle SOA Suite, WebCenter, and ADF:

15.4.2.1 About Upgrading JSR168 Portlet Producers to JSR286

Oracle WebCenter 10g supports Java portlets based on the Java Portlet Specification, JSR 168; Oracle WebCenter 11g supports Java portlets based on Java Portlet Specification version 2, or JSR 286. JSR 286 is an extension of JSR 168, and is backward compatible with JSR 168.

In Oracle WebCenter 10g, Oracle JSF Portlet Bridge is based on and conforms to JSR 301, whereas in Oracle WebCenter 11g, Oracle JSF Portlet Bridge conforms to JSR 329.

In JDeveloper 11g, when you open for the first time an existing portlet producer application containing JSR 168 portlets, portlets are automatically upgraded to be JSR 286 compliant. If the application is a portlet bridge application, it is further automatically upgraded to be JSR 329-compliant.

In most cases, the upgraded portlets continue to work exactly as they did before. However, there are a few cases in which JSR 168 portlets function differently when upgraded to JSR 286; these portlets must invoke a JSR 168 compatibility mode to run under JSR 286.

In Oracle WebCenter 10g, a portlet producer application contains the portlet.xml and oracle-portlet.xml files. When you upgrade a portlet producer application, the oracle.portlet.xml file is deleted, and all its details are moved to portlet.xml. The navigation parameters stored in oracle.portlet.xml are converted into public render parameters and are added to portlet.xml. For information about how JSR 168 parameters are handled in an upgraded JSR 286-compliant portlet producer application, see Section 16.4, “Migration of JSR 168 Portlet Producers to JSR 286: Handling of Portlet Elements.”

Patch Set 3 New Features for Portlet Developers

If you’re a portlet developer, WebCenter 11g R1 Patch Set 3 has a handful of new features for you as well.

Most importantly, WebCenter now supports the development of JSR 286 portlets, thus eliminating the need for the Oracle-specific portlet descriptor, oracle-portlet.xml. You can build, test, and deploy JSR 286 portlets. First, you have to walk through the portlet creation wizard by creating an application based on the Portlet Producer Application template.

Then, you need to create a new portlet in your “Portlets” project.

On the JDeveloper design time experience side, the biggest change is the Design view for the portlet.xml portlet descriptor. After you have created the skeleton of your portlet code, you can easily go back and edit the generated code in a very easy to use, declarative manner.

As you can probably see in these screen shots, the editing experience of previously generated portlet meta data became very straight-forward.

Defining portlet events, parameters, security settings are all available to you.

And as always, you can switch to the source view to take a look at the generated code or make changes there manually.

Building a Live Twitter Portlet in 5 minutes

John Brunswick from Oracle demonstrates how easy it is to build a Twitter portlet and consume it in Oracle WebCenter without writing a single line of code.

In this easy to follow youtube video John walks us through the steps end-to-end, covering in detail how to:

• Consume an XML feed in Oracle JDeveloper
• Generate the XSD using JDeveloper
• Create an ADF URL data control
• Visualize the Twitter data as a table on a new JSF page
• Expose the JSF page as a standards-based portlet (JSR 168/WSRP 2.0)
• Register the WSRP 2.0 portlet producer with WebCenter
• Drop the Twitter portlet onto a WebCenter page using Oracle Composer

Creating a Managed Server for Portlets and WebCenter Custom Portal Apps

When you install WebCenter Spaces, in addition to the admin server, you end up with three WebLogic managed servers:

• WLS_Spaces: hosts WebCenter Spaces
• WLS_Portlet: hosts standards-based and PDK-Java portlets
• WLS_Services: hosts the WebCenter social computing services

One of beauties of the flexible architecture of the Fusion Middleware is that you can easily decouple any of the components, and manage/scale them out as you need. So, what if you wanted to create a dedicated managed server for your portlets or for your custom WebCenter portal applications?

To create your new managed server, you have three tools to choose from. Create your new managed server using:

• Jython script: fully scriptable. This option comes with a sample managed server creation script, available for download from OTN, see under WebCenter Administration Sample. The download contains three scripts, a text file with instructions, a properties file with information about the target server, and the Jython script itself. This properties file allows you to specify administration-specific settings for  your new managed server, including the URL used to manage the server, admin user name and password, as well as the purpose you want to create your managed server for:
  • serverType=WebCenter: to host WebCenter custom portal applications
  • serverType=Portlet: to host portlets
• WLS Admin Console: browser-based. After creating the managed server, you have to manually configure the shared libraries.
• FMW Control: browser based. After creating the managed server, you have to manually configure the shared libraries.

The Administrator’s Guide for Oracle WebCenter covers these steps in detail under 7.1.3.1 Creating and Provisioning a WebLogic Managed Server Instance section.

JSF Portlet Bridge Presentations at the JSF Summit

Oracle’s Mike Freedman, the spec lead for JSR 301: Portlet 1.0 Bridge for JavaServer Faces 1.2 and JSR 329: Portlet 2.0 Bridge for JavaServer Faces 1.2 gives two presentations at the JSF Summit, in Orlando, FL.

Here are the abstracts:

 

 

Did you know that your JSF application is also a portlet?

The Portlet Bridge (JSR 301 or JSR 329) provides a Faces compatible runtime environment in a Java portlet environment enabling a JSF application to simultaneously be published as a web application and a portlet. This talk introduces you to the Portlet Bridge and shows you how to use it in your applications. Demonstrations are provided to illustrate concepts. Topics covered include:

• The difference between JSR 301 and JSR 329.
• Extending a Faces application so it also runs as a portlet.
• An overview of the bridge’s configuration flexibility to adapt to differing Faces and application environments.

The Portlet Bridge and the 2.0s

In the recent past both Java Portlets and JSF have published their 2.0 versions. This talk introduces you to how the major new features in each of these 2.0s are managed by the bridge. The Portlet Bridge provides a Faces compatible runtime environment in a Java portlet environment enabling a JSF application to simultaneously be published as a web application and a portlet. As a technology that sits between two others (the Java Portlet API and Faces), its capabilities expand as the controlling technologies are revised. Demonstrations are provided to illustrate concepts. Topics covered include:

• Portlet 2.0 shared render parameters
• Portlet 2.0 eventing
• Portlet 2.0 resource serving
• JSF 2.0 Ajax support

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

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!

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.