Deploy your portal overview

 

+

Search Tips   |   Advanced Search

 

Overview

Portal solutions consist include Portlets, Themes/Skins, and Portlet Services, and configurations which include Content Topology, Page Layouts, Wires, Portlet Configurations, and Portlet Data.

During portal solution development, the portal solution is initially developed on one system, while the production portal solution is deployed later on a different production system.

The process of moving the portal solution between these systems is called staging. Staging is required at multiple times during the development cycle of a portal solution. Each release of the portal solution is created on one system and than moved to the production system. During the portal development lifecycle, multiple portal solution releases are created and brought into production. Multiple solution releases are built on top of one portal product release. In contrast, upgrading a portal product release is called migration. Staging is only possible between the same product release.

 

Portal configuration management

Configuration management for WebSphere Portal is different from configuration management for typical software components. Usually, releases of software solutions consist of software components and configurations that are closely coupled to software artifacts. Configurations are used to provide software components with environmental details required to allow the components to run in different environments. These configurations allow for flexibility in component implementations, allowing for the deployment of components in different environments. Apart from these configurations, applications deal with application payload data. This data is generated by end users of the system and represents the business content of the application. A clear separation of these two types of data can be made by the nature of the data.

WebSphere Portal, as any other software product, has configuration data which is used for software component configuration. These configurations are manageable through property files, installation dialogs and configuration tasks.

However, a WebSphere Portal solution release additionally consists of application payload data. There are content trees, page layouts, access control lists, credential vault configurations, concrete portlets and more, that are considered as part of a portal solution release. Technically there is no difference between these configurations and user configuration data. In reality, there are differences, depending upon the portal solution. Different portal solutions may implement different user customization strategies and therefore require different data separation strategies. The ability to customize data separation is one of the strengths of WebSphere Portal today.

The ReleaseBuilder allows management of release configurations independent of user configurations. Release configuration data can be exported into an XMLAccess configuration file. During staging of follow-on releases it is possible to stage differences between two releases using the XML configuration interface. Here, difference refers to differences in release configurations, including configuration entities that have been removed, added or changed compared to the previous release.

 

Team roles

The following roles are involved or affected by the Development/Integration/Staging to Production process.

 

Developer Roles (Development Team):

Portlet application developer:

The Portlet application developer is responsible for developing Portlets and Portlet Applications. His tasks in the portal team include: Development of portlets, assembly and packaging of portlet applications into WAR files according to the Java Portlet Specification (JSR 168), and unit test of portlets. Packaging may include other artifacts, like JSPs, produced by the Portlet application designer.

Portal application developer:

The Portal application developer creates the technical design of the portal application, and assembles and implements portal applications. These applications usually consists of a variety of portal artifacts packaged together into a portal application EAR file.

The Portal application developer also develops extensions for the portal runtime container. Additional tasks with include development of portlet services, portal services, user management services, dynamic assembly transformations and screens, credential vault adaptors, and customized login commands.

Portal user interface designer:

The portal user interface designer develops the user interface design and implementation for specific portal applications. The designer's tasks include development of custom themes, layouts, skins, screens (login, error,...), and the assignment of themes and skins to the portal application.

 

Other team members

Release manager:

The release manager is responsible for the artifact and configuration management and consistency within the VControl System (VCS). His tasks in the portal team include: Build and bundle portal solution release out of the VCS for deployment, delivery of solution releases.

Portal deployer:

The Portal Deployer is responsible for deploying the content released by the release manager. The content may consist of installing or updating portal solutions, portal applications, single portlet applications, themes and skins, configuration of the portal product, and importing and exporting portal configurations.

Portal administrator:

The portal administrator is a portal end user with extended permissions in order to administer a specific portal solution or sub-portion of the portal solution. The portal administrator is responsible for defining the portal content for the portal end users including creating and editing portal pages, managing users, managing groups, managing entitlements, managing system credentials, and managing themes and skins.

The portal administrator uses the administrative portlets in order to perform these tasks.

Portal operator:

The Portal Operator is responsible for installation and maintenance of the base layers of the infrastructure (closely related to the hardware and operating system platform). His tasks in the portal team include activities like: setting up hardware, installing of products, execute portal config tasks, network configuration, setting up system monitoring, implementing backup procedures, system maintenance (e.g. log file archiving), management of operating system users.

Portal end user:

The portal end user accesses the portal via a client device. The portal user may or may not have an account to log into the portal to access a personalized view of the portal. Portal end users can customize their individual appearance and content of the portal. Portal users use subsets of the portal administration user interface based on the set of rights they are granted within the portal.

 

Terminology

Staging is the process of moving solution releases from development to production. This process typically consists of partially or fully automated configuration management tasks and quality assurance activities.

 

Portal Artifacts

Portal Artifacts are stored in the portal file system. All deliverables of software development are usually artifacts (otherwise referred to as software components).

The following components are portal artifacts:

Portal System Configuration Property files
Themes and Skins JSP files and stylesheets
Portal Customizations Java Classes
Portlet services Active Credentials, Credential VaultAdaptors
Portlet Code Java Classes, JSPs, XML files
Portal Filters Java Classes
Servlet Filters Java Classes
J2EE Artifacts Managed by WebSphere Application Server

 

Portal Extension Artifacts

Portal Extension Artifacts are stored in the portal file system or in a database. These artifacts exist in an installed portal system. They belong to components that are installed together with the portal but are not core portal components. Typically these components are available with and without the portal server.

The following components are examples of portal extension artifacts:

 

Portal Configuration

The Portal Configuration is stored in the portal configuration database. It consists of configuration entities. Each portal resource is represented by one portal configuration entity in the portal database.

The following entities are part of the portal configuration:

  • Portal Content Tree (Navigation, Pages, Layouts)
  • URL Mappings
  • Portlet Application Configurations
  • Portlet Application Settings
  • Portlet Configurations
  • Portlet Settings
  • Portlet Data (legacy portlets)
  • Portlet Preferences (JSR168 portlets)
  • Access Control Data (Roles, ActionSets)
  • Credential Data
  • Themes
  • Skins

 

Portal Solution Release

The Portal Solution Release is the solution that is developed by you, the customer, on top of WebSphere Portal. It consists of portal configurations, portal artifacts, and portal extension artifacts. WebSphere Portal is not part of the Portal Solution Release. The Portal Solution Release configuration is shared between multiple users, user configurations are not included. Administrators create and maintain the portal solution configurations.

 

Portal Solution Release Configuration

The Portal Solution Release Configuration is defined by the complete portal configuration that is part of a portal solution release. These configurations are created and changed by the portal administrators. Changes to the portal solution release configuration usually affect more than one user.

 

Portal User Configurations

Portal User Configurations are Portal Configurations that belong to only one user (configurations of private entities). These configurations typically result from customizations performed by end users of the portal. Changes of these configurations impact only one user of the portal system. The following configuration entities are user configurations.

  • Implicit derived pages
  • Private user pages
  • Portlet data
  • Credential data (private or shared but not system scoped)

 

See also

 

Workplace Web Content Management is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

 

WebSphere is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

 

IBM is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.