Virtual portals reference

 

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1. Configuration tasks for administering virtual portals
   • create-virtual-portal
   • list-all-virtual-portals
   • modify-virtual-portal
   • delete-virtual-portal
2. Information overview for configuring user populations for virtual portals
3. Hints and tips
4. Known limitations

 

Configuration tasks for administering virtual portals

Before beginning, see...

• Plan for virtual portals
• Administer virtual portals
• About the configuration program

The tasks described here take the listed inputs as they must be specified in the property file wkplc.properties.

The property file must be encoded in the ISO 8859-1 character encoding format.

 

create-virtual-portal

Use this task to create a virtual portal.

Invoked as part of the ConfigEngine script file...

• For UNIX:

  ./ConfigEngine.sh create-virtual-portal

• For i5/OS:

  • From the UserData directory:

    ConfigEngine.sh create-virtual-portal

Inputs...

• VirtualPortalTitle

  The title of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory.

• VirtualPortalRealm

  The realm of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory if you have realms enabled in the portal installation. If you do not have realms enabled, do not specify a value for the realm.

• VirtualPortalContext

  The portal context of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory. The context must be unique.

• VirtualPortalNlsFile

  The national language support (NLS) file for the virtual portal. This input is optional. You input the path and file name of your national language support file. You can create your own national language support file to specify additional titles and descriptions in other languages for your virtual portal.

  If you do not specify an NLS file, the virtual portal is created with the title that you give as the value to the VirtualPortalTitle parameter only, but without titles in other languages and without descriptions. For a list of the languages that are available with WebSphere Portal and their language codes refer to Language support. Notes:

  1. If you specify no NLS file, the value specified by the VirtualPortalTitle input parameter will show to users as the title of the virtual portal in all language environments, independent of the system and browser locale and the user preferences.

  2. If you specify an NLS file, the value given for the virtual portal title in that NLS file overrides the title specified by the VirtualPortalTitle input parameter.

  3. If you specify an NLS file, do not use prefixes in that NLS file.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

You pass the parameters listed above for the virtual portal to the configuration task.

To pass a description for the virtual portal to the configuration task, you have to specify this in the NLS file.

The task creates the virtual portal itself, but it does not create any default content for the virtual portal or grant any access permissions to the virtual portal administrators. You need to perform these tasks separately after creating the virtual portal, for example by using the XML configuration interface. For details about the access permissions required for virtual portal administrators refer to Subadministrators of a virtual portal and their access roles and rights. For details about how to use the XML configuration interface refer to The XML configuration interface.

 

list-all-virtual-portals

Use this task to list all virtual portals.

Invoked as part of the ConfigEngine script file...

• For UNIX:

  ./ConfigEngine.sh list-all-virtual-portals

• For i5/OS:

  • From the UserData directory:

    ConfigEngine.sh list-all-virtual-portals

Inputs... None

Outputs: This tasks lists all your virtual portals, together with the following information:

• The title of the virtual portal
• The description of the virtual portal
• The realm of the virtual portal
• The object ID of the virtual portal.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

The context of a virtual portal as specified by using the configuration task create-virtual-portal with the input parameter VirtualPortalContext cannot be shown by using the configuration task...

list-all-virtual-portals

 

modify-virtual-portal

Use this task to modify a virtual portal by using its object ID. To determine the correct object ID of the virtual portal, use the task list-all-virtual-portals.

Invoked as part of the ConfigEngine script file...

• For UNIX:

  ./ConfigEngine.sh modify-virtual-portal

• For i5/OS:

  • From the UserData directory:

    ConfigEngine.sh modify-virtual-portal

Inputs...

• VirtualPortalObjectId

  The object ID of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory for identification of the virtual portal that you want to modify.

• VirtualPortalRealm

  The realm of the virtual portal. You can only specify a realm if you have realms enabled in the portal installation.

• VirtualPortalNlsFile

  The National Language Support file of the virtual portal. You input the path and file name of your national language support file. You can create your own national language support file to specify additional titles and descriptions in other languages for your virtual portal.

  If you specify an NLS file, do not use prefixes in that NLS file.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

To modify the title or description of the virtual portal, you have to specify this in the NLS file accordingly.

 

delete-virtual-portal

Use this task to delete a virtual portal by using its object ID. To determine the correct object ID of the virtual portal, use the task list-all-virtual-portals.

Invoked as part of the ConfigEngine script file...

• For UNIX:

  ./ConfigEngine.sh delete-virtual-portal

• For i5/OS:

  • From the UserData directory:

    ConfigEngine.sh delete-virtual-portal

Inputs...

VirtualPortalObjectId

The object ID of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

 

Information overview for configuring user populations for virtual portals

This section gives an overview of the information that is available in the WebSphere Portal information center about configuring user populations, realms, and user registries for your virtual portals.

The following links move from the general to the detailed and specific.

 

Hints and tips

The following hints and tips apply to virtual portals in WebSphere Portal V6.1:

• Do not grant the subadministrators of virtual portals the access permissions to perform any installation related tasks, such as installation of portlets or themes. The isolation between the different virtual portals as provided by WebSphere Portal V6.1 is limited to some extent. All virtual portals share a common Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

  Therefore it is important to restrict the administration privileges of the virtual portal subadministrators and prevent them from installing their own code artefacts, such as themes or portlets. Unstable or malicious code that is introduced on one virtual portal can destabilize the entire portal installation and thereby all other virtual portals. A flexible way to introduce virtual portal specific portlets without impacting any other virtual portals is to use Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP).

• Not all resources can be scoped to individual virtual portals. For example, all themes and skins are available to all virtual portals without restrictions. Credential vault, portlet services, and portal services are also common for an entire portal installation.

  They cannot be scoped to an individual virtual portal.

• The settings which are defined in the portal property files apply for the entire portal installation. You cannot specify separate settings for individual virtual portals.

• To make use of the single signon feature that is provided by WAS, you have to use the same common domain suffix for all virtual portals.

• Portal search, personalization, and templates, are not aware of virtual portals.

• There are no virtual portal specific enhancements to the published portal commands and application programming interfaces.

• A URL mapping that is defined for a resource in a particular virtual portal must use the same URL context as the friendly URL context for that virtual portal itself. Example: In a virtual portal that uses the friendly URL mapping wps/portal/vp_1, all URL mappings for portal resources must start with wps/portal/vp_1, for example wps/portal/vp_1/url_1 and wps/portal/vp_1/url_2. Within this virtual portal a URL mapping such as wps/portal/url_1 is not valid, as the portion vp_1 of the URL Context is missing.

• The administration portlet Virtual Portal Manager cannot delete all resources that are associated with a virtual portal. For example, it does not delete additional URL mappings that administrators might have created for the virtual portal. Use the XML configuration interface to do this.

• All virtual portals on a portal installation share a common logging and tracing.

• When you re-initialize a virtual portal by using the Virtual Portal Manager portlet, this applies the XML script for the default virtual portal content (or your custom script) again and recreates the default content of the virtual portal. Resources that you removed from the default content are recreated. Resources that you added to the default content remain in the virtual portal.

• You have to run the wp-create-realm task to create realms for your Virtual Portal. See the Adding realm support file for your operating system.

• The context of a virtual portal as specified by the configuration task create-virtual-portal and the input parameter VirtualPortalContext cannot be shown by using the configuration task list-all-virtual-portals.

• The Portal Access Control administration in the Resource Permissions portlet shows users from different realms who have role mappings on shared resources by their object IDs. Therefore, apply special care and consideration when deleting such portal resources: Do not delete resources on which users from other realms have role mappings, if they are required in other virtual portals. This applies to members of roles on portal resources that cannot be scoped and are therefore shared between the virtual portals. Role members who belong to the realm of your local virtual portal are displayed as usual, but role members who belong to different realms are displayed in a different manner:

  • Role members for shared resources who belong to the realm of the virtual portal under which you are currently working are listed by their actual names under which they were created.

  • Role members for shared resources that do not belong to the realm of the current portal are listed by their portal object IDs. For example, a role member from a different realm might be represented as 8_0_B.

  You find the list of role members under Administration > Access > Resource Permissions > Select Resource Type > Assigning Access for a resource > Edit Role, under the first column Members in the Role.

• You cannot create custom URLs in one virtual portal that address portal resource in another virtual portal. The reason is that both object IDs and unique names relate to resources of the local virtual portal. For details about how to create URLs refer to Creating custom links to portlets and pages.

 

Known limitations

The following sections describe known limitations with virtual portals.

 

Change of theme for virtual portal might not take effect

If you change the theme for a virtual portal by editing the virtual portal in the Virtual Portals portlet, the following problems might occur:

1. The selected theme might not show the next time you go into the Edit mode for the virtual portal.

2. The selected theme might not be applied to the virtual portal, and the virtual portal might still be displayed with the original theme.

 

Portal supports up to 150 virtual portals

A single portal installation can support up to 150 virtual portals.

 

Creating the portal site search collection fails

Problem:

If the file path length for the location of search collections exceeds its limit, the collection cannot be created. This can occur particularly when the portal site collection is created under UNIX operating systems. Cause:

The file path length for the portal search collection is limited to 118 characters. If this limit is exceeded, the default collection cannot be created. The following items contribute to the length of the file path:

• The installation directory path. Under UNIX operating systems the installation directory path name can be longer than under other operating systems.

• By default, the search collection for the portal site content is created under the path your_portal_install_directory/PortalServer/collections.

• The name of the virtual portal.

• The name of the search collection.

Solution:

1. Change the default directory location for the portal site search collection to a shorter path, so that the complete path and file name does not exceed a length of 118 characters. For details about how to do this refer to Configure the default location for search collections.

2. Recreate the portal site search collection. For details about how to do this refer to Creating or resetting the portal site collection.

 

Parent topic

Multiple virtual portals

 

Related concepts

Planning for virtual portals
Language support
The XML configuration interface
Use WSRP services

 

Related tasks

Configure WebSphere Portal
Configure the default location for search collections
Creating or resetting the portal site collection

 

Related reference

Command reference for Portal Scripting Interface

 

Related information

Administering virtual portals
Creating custom links to portlets and pages

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