Information that the Consumer exchanges with the Producer

Before a Consumer can consume WSRP services from a Producer as remote portlets, you need some information from the Producer. Depending on the configuration, we might also need to provide information to the Producer.

The information that Producers and Consumers exchange includes the following sections:

• WSRP service description
• WSRP interfaces
• WSRP security set up and user information
• SSL certificates
• Registration information
• Group IDs and handles of portlets.

WSRP service description

WSRP service Consumers need information about how to bind to the WSRP services that the Producer provides. This information is described in the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) document of the Producer. The WSDL document provides general technical information about how the Consumer connects to the Producer and about the related infrastructure. The Consumer can use the information in the WSDL document to bind to the Producer and retrieve the Producer's service description for further details about the Producer.

The WSDL document provides information about various aspects and properties of the Producer:

• The WSRP services that the Producer provides

• The port URLs of the WSRP interfaces.

If the WSRP service Producer is an IBM WebSphere Portal, then Consumers of WSRP services can access the WSDL document of the Producer at the following URL:

 http://producer_portal_host:producer_port/wp_contextRoot/wsdl/wsrp_service.wsdl

1. The host and port and the wp_contextRoot directory must match those of the Producer WebSphere Portal installation.

2. If the communication with the Producer is set up to use Secure Socket Layer communication, the Consumer must use https to address this URL:

    https://producer_portal_host:producer_port/wp_contextRoot/wsdl/wsrp_service.wsdl
   

If the WSRP service Producer is not a WebSphere Portal, then the owner or administrator of the Producer portal needs to provide the information to the Consumer by external means of communication, such as fax, phone, or email.

WSRP interfaces

To allow communication between the Producer portal and the Consumer portal, the Producer provides has a set of interfaces to the Consumers. These interfaces are defined by the WSRP standard. The interfaces are listed here:

• Service Description. This interface is mandatary. It is the self-description of the Producer and its available portlets.
• Markup. This interface is mandatary. It is an interface for requesting and interacting with markup fragments.
• Portlet Management. This interface is optional. It grants access to the life cycle of the hosted portlets and to their persistent state.
• Registration. This interface is optional. It is not supported by the current implementation of the WSRP Producer in WebSphere Portal. However, the WebSphere Portal Consumer can handle Producers that support WSRP registration interfaces.

The Producer can expose some or all of these interfaces to the Consumers as appropriate. The Producer describes these WSRP interfaces in the WSDL document as described under WSRP service description. The WSDL document provides general technical information about how the Consumer connects to the Producer and about the related infrastructure.

WSRP security set up and user information

The Producer has the option to set up security for the provided WSRP services. This can be by SSL or by WS-Security, for example LTPA token forwarding. WSRP on the Consumer portal must be configured to use the same authentication mechanism as on the Producer portal. In most cases of WS-Security token authentication the Producer and Consumer portals must use the same user registry.

If the Producer portal has set up portal security for its WSRP services, the administrator of the Producer portal must assign access permissions to the users of the Consumer portal using Portal Access Control. In this case the Producer needs to obtain the required user information from the Consumer.

SSL certificates

If the Producer has configured security for WSRP services using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) client certificate authentication, the Producer needs to provide the server certificate to the Consumer, and the Consumer needs to provide the client certificate to the Producer. For information about how to obtain the client certificate of the Consumer portal, follow the instructions in the topic about securing WSRP by SSL for a Consumer portal.

Registration information

If the Producer requires registration by the Consumer portal, the Producer needs to provide the required registration information to the Consumer.

Group IDs and handles of portlets

If a Consumer portal consumes a WSRP service from a Producer portal using xmlaccess.sh, the Consumer portal administrator needs to specify the handle and groupid of the remote portlet. Therefore the Producer provided that information to the Consumer.

The portlet handle and group ID are listed in the service description of the Producer. The portlet handle for each portlet that the Producer provides is listed in a portletHandle tag. The group ID for each portlet that the Producer provides is listed in the groupID tag of the service description.

• Consumer checklist for exchanging information with a Producer
  Use this list to check whether you have obtained and provided all required information that you need to exchange with the Producer.

Parent: Use the portal as a WSRP Consumer
Next: Prepare security for a WSRP Consumer portal