Virtual portals reference
This topic provides information about configuring virtual portals,
hints and tips, and known limitations.
It contains the following sections:
Configuration tasks for administering virtual
portals
create-virtual-portal
Description: Creates
a 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 your 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. For more details about the format of this file refer
to Command reference for the Portal Scripting Interface under Property file format. 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 Express and their language
codes refer to Language support. Notes:
- If you specify no NLS file, the value that you specify 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.
- If you specify an NLS file, the value given for the virtual portal title
in that NLS file overrides the title that you specify by the VirtualPortalTitle input
parameter.
- If you specify an NLS file, do not use prefixes in that NLS file.
Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal Express 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.
If you want 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
Description: Lists
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 Express is
running.
Error Conditions: None
Task dependencies: None
Tasks
invoked: None
Note: 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
Description: Modifies
a 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 your 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.
For more details about the format of this file refer to Command reference for Portal Scripting Interface under Property file format.Note: If you specify an NLS
file, do not use prefixes in that NLS file.
Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal Express is
running.
Error Conditions: None
Task dependencies: None
Tasks
invoked: None
If you want to modify the title or description
of the virtual portal, you have to specify this in the NLS file accordingly.
delete-virtual-portal
Description: Deletes
a virtual portal.
Inputs: VirtualPortalObjectId The object ID of the
virtual portal. This input is mandatory.
Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal Express 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 Express 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 Express Version
6.1:
- 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 Express Version
6.1 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). For more information about
WSRP refer to WSRP services, and other portals can integrate the WSRP services as remote portlets for their users.">Using WSRP services.
- 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.
- If you want to make use of the single signon feature that is provided
by WebSphere
Application Server, you have to use
the same common domain suffix for all virtual portals.
- Document management, portal search, personalization, templates, and the Document Manager portlet 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. You can 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 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:
- The selected theme might not show the next time you go into the Edit mode
for the virtual portal.
- The selected theme might not be applied to the virtual portal, and the
virtual portal might still be displayed with the original theme.
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 Linux 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 Linux 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: Proceed as follows:
- 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 Configuring the default location for search collections.
- 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
|
|
|
Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1