What's new for administrators - WebSphere Portal v8
Managed pages
v8.0 introduces support for managed pages, which are portal pages stored in Web Content Manager. Managing portal pages within WCM, allows us to apply web content features like workflow, version control, and syndication to portal pages. Changes are published together.
Changes made to a page are made in a draft state, without affecting the live server.
WCM projects coordinate en-masse publishing of drafts.
Workflow ensures changes are made available on the live server only after approval.
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Syndication handles transfers from a staging environment to a production environment. All required page artifacts and content are transferred at the same time.
The Portal Scripting Interface includes methods for working with projects and web content libraries, and xmlaccess.sh includes similar support for projects.
OpenID
Starting with v8.0 we can now use OpenID to allow external identity providers, such as Google and Yahoo, to authenticate users. Facebook credentials can be used for sign on. Transient users who are trusted by the identity provider can access portal without requiring a portal user account.
Federate tags
With Portal v8 we can import tags from IBM Connections into the portal tag store. Tag Center contains tagged content from the portal, WCM, and IBM Connections. Users can now, from within the portal, search for tagged content, independent of whether this content resides in the portal, WCM, or IBM Connections.
Search optimization
To improve search optimization, page metadata is rendered as keywords in the HTML. The metadata is taken from WCM and includes: title, keywords, category, and more.
Site promotions and overlay analytic reports
More flexible options to tag pages, portlets, or web content and measure their usefulness through Campaign and Custom tags. Overlay statistics provide an inline view to track effectiveness of a web property.
IBM Connections community pages
Associate communities with pages. Create communities automatically using page template.
IBM Forms
IBM Forms allow users to build applications to collect and analyze structured information from customers, partners, and employees.
Integrator for SAP
Use IBM portal Integrator for SAP to integrate content from an SAP NetWeaver Portal into your IBM portal. We can integrate navigational structures and single content pieces. Integrator for SAP integrates the SAP NetWeaver Portal navigation into portal on a page named SAP navigation. The navigation is retrieved new from the SAP NetWeaver Portal for each portal session and used for the duration on that session.
For integrating individual pieces of SAP NetWeaver Portal content, portal provides a portlet named...
IBM portal Integrator for SAP
Unified Task List
Access tasks from multiple business process management solutions from a single user interface. The Unified Task List portlet provides a single point of integration between multiple systems and displays tasks that portal users must complete to advance workflows.
Web Application Bridge
The IBM Web Application Bridge integrates existing web applications, especially SharePoint 2007 sites, so the global user population can access them from multiple locations. Also supports forms, multiple context roots, and eventing.
Graphical user interface installation
WebSphere Portal v8.0 is the first version to adopt the IBM Installation Manager user interface. The interface replaces the program based on InstallShield MultiPlatform (ISMP that installed, updated, and uninstalled previous versions. Installation Manager is a single installation program that can use remote or local software flat-file repositories to install, modify, or update new portal products. It determines and shows available packages -- including products, fix packs, interim fixes, and so on -- checks prerequisites and interdependencies, and installs the selected packages. We also use the Installation Manager to uninstall the packages that it installed.
IBM i Installation
If we are installing multiple portal profiles on IBM i, we can now specify if you want each profile to have a unique portal binary or if you want each profile to share the portal binaries with the first installed profile.
Install WCM into an existing portal installation
If you installed portal using the Server license, we can now install WCM into the existing installation.
The Solution Installer
Prior to portal v8.0, you had to install the Solution Installer from the Solutions Catalog. We could then use the Solution Installer to install applications into the portal environment. Now the Solution Installer is installed when you install portal.
ConfigEngine
We can run ConfigEngine tasks from a read-only ConfigEngine that allows us to manage multiple profiles from one location or we can run ConfigEngine tasks from the WP_PROFILE directory that you have used in previous releases.
For example, to use the ConfigEngine read-only directory, run ConfigEngine in the ConfigEngine folder that is on the same level in the directory structure as the default wp_profile directory. We can substitute the path to the ConfigEngine read-only directory in any ConfigEngine task in the product documentation.
Configuration wizard
Use configuration wizard to configure databases, set up security, and migrate to a new version. use workflows to create customized scripts, such as changing portal and portlet URIs, and replacing the portal administrator user ID to create customized scripts for the environment. Use the web UI for running ConfigEngine tasks as an alternative to the command line.
JDBC OCI Type 2 driver support for Oracle and Oracle RAC
We can use JDBC Type 4 drivers or JDBC OCI Type 2 drivers when transferring databases. To migrate from a previous version of portal using JDBC Type 4 drivers, the target system must use JDBC Type 4 drivers. Direct migration from a database using JDBC Type 4 drivers to a database using JDBC OCI Type 2 drivers is not supported. Once migration is complete, we can continue using JDBC Type 4 drivers or change the driver type to JDBC OCI Type 2 drivers as appropriate. Transparent Application Failover (TAF) through JDBC OCI Type 2 drivers is not supported.
Parent: What's new