Portlet deployment

Although portlets are a type of enterprise application, portlet deployment is typically done through WebSphere Portal. If done directly to WAS, WebSphere Portal has to be notified separately because WebSphere Portal maintains configuration information extracted from the portlet descriptor (portlet.xml) during portlet deployment.

If a portlet is deployed through WebSphere Portal, it first takes whatever configuration information it needs from the portlet’s WAR file, and then it generates a unique object ID for this portlet. WebSphere Portal then wraps the portlet’s WAR within an EAR definition, giving it a name based on the portlet’s display name, suffixed with the generated object ID. This guarantees that the portlet’s underlying enterprise application name is unique to this portal. In the event that this portal is clustered, the new enterprise application will be common to this cluster, but unique from any other cluster in the cell, because again the object ID is guaranteed to be unique.

If, however, the portlet was already deployed as part of the basic portal configuration during initial installation, then the object ID is likely to be the same as other portal installations based on the same version of WebSphere Portal. When multiple clusters are defined in the same cell based on this version, there will likely be many portlets that are common between the clusters, because they share the same object IDs.

z/OS only: To deploy and activate portlets in the WebSphere Portal cluster on z/OS from any node in the cell:

1. Deploy the portlets using either the WebSphere Portal Administration page or xmlaccess.sh utility .

2. Activate the deployed portlets in the cluster. When configuring the portal, the Customization Dialog has created job EJPSPACT in your target control data set. Submit this job. Upon completion, examine the job output. Success is indicated with "rc=0" in the job output. In addition to activating the portlets, this job causes the dmgr to synchronize the changes across the cluster members.

When you deploy and activate portlets, while we are logged in to WebSphere Portal, you must log out and log back in before we can see the updated status for the portlets.

Parent: Manage portlets in the cluster