IBM WebSphere Portal new features and improvements
WebSphere Portal includes new features, such as virtualization and content tagging and rating, as well as enhancements on Page Builder and unified theme architecture, serviceability, migration and content management among others.
ConfigEngine
A new task has been added to aid in automated log collection for problem reports opened with IBM Support. This is in addition to the log gathering available in the ISA / ISA-lite support tools from IBM. The ConfigEngine task does not require the installation of any additional code in order to run the log collection.
Information portlet
There are now two Information portlets that are available. These portlets have the same function but the original was written with the IBM API and the new portlet was written with the JSR 286 API. The new portlet can render on both the client and server side while the original Information portlet can only render on the server side.
Configuration wizard
The configuration wizard has been improved to make it easier to configure WebSphere Portal security with an LDAP server. The new configuration wizard function now attempts to query the LDAP server to provide better defaults for the various questions that need to be answered in order to successfully do an LDAP security configuration.
Learn more about the configuration wizard.
Blog and wiki
You can now add a blog, blog library, or wiki to a page using the Add Content widget in the Page Builder theme. There are additional enhancements to globalization support through the utilization of new IBMWeb Content Manager API's.
Learn more about blogs and wikis.
Error reporting
To improve the "First Failure Data Capture" characteristics of WebSphere Portal for a class of problems around heap memory usage, WebSphere Portal install will by default activate verbose garbage collection in the WebSphere Portal JVMs. This is done by adding the appropriate settings to the JVM command line arguments for the WebSphere Portal JVM within WAS, to activate the support that is provided by the underlying JVM for writing statistics regarding Java heap garbage collection activity to a log.In addition, on those platforms that support it, the "log rolling" capability is activated to try to balance capturing enough garbage collection history to be useful in debugging while conserving the amount of actual disk space used by the logs. In normal verbose garbage collection, the log could grow without bound. With the log rolling capability, the log is limited to a reasonable number of generations, where each generation contains a limited number of garbage collection cycle reports. Because WebSphere Portal is activating the support that is provided in the underlying JVM code, the details of how this support works are documented in the appropriate Java Diagnostics Guide.
This large allocation logging is activated by a JVM command line parameter registered for the Portal servers within WAS, and can be tuned or deactivated by editing or removing the appropriate strings within the WAS configuration. For example, the 10 MB threshold can be lowered to a smaller value if you suspect allocations that are "larger than expected but not 10 MB".
Learn more about the Java Diagnostics Guide.
Messages
Message catalog has been updated so that any new messages added have more descriptive explanations and suggested user actions to aid in users and IBM Support problem determination procedures. In addition to the new entries, existing common error messages have been revamped to aid in problem determination.
Migration
Improved migration paths, now migrating from WebSphere Portal v6.1 is more like a software upgrade. Database schema changes between WebSphere Portal v6.1 and 7.0 are automatically processed. You can also perform in-place database upgrades.
Learn more about migration.
Multiple profiles
The virtualization technology allows you to install and configure the portal and then create multiple profiles that you can use to create a portal farm or a clustered environment. A portal farm is a simple way to build and maintain a highly scalable, highly available server environment. It differs from the clustered environment in that it is not maintained by a Deployment Manager.
Learn more about setting up a cluster.
Learn more about setting up and maintaining a portal farm.
Page Builder and Unified Theme Architecture
The Page Builder theme is now the default theme. The Page Builder theme has evolved into a new unified architecture supporting portlets and widgets, as well as both server-side and client-side page aggregation. Themes can now be fully edited and managed directly via static HTML files stored in the WebDAV file store. Styles have been further optimized for performance and ease of customization by exploiting the latest CSS3 features for linear gradients, drop shadows and rounded corners.Existing Page Builder features have been improved to support the new enhanced Client Side Aggregation architecture. The tab navigation widget, with drop-down menus, inline page creation and drag and drop page re-ordering now supports client-side page switching without a browser full page refresh. Content Search finds portlets and widgets to add to the page. Change Style supports and Change Layout support static CSS and layout templates stored and configured through WebDAV.
Learn more about Page Builder.
Security
Impersonation allows a user, such as a support specialist, to access a user's workstation to test out a new page, portlet, and so forth, and see issues as they occur on the workstation. Before you can impersonate another user, you first must enable the impersonation feature and assign the Can Run As User role to the appropriate user.
Learn more about impersonation and how to enable it.
Tag and rate
Users can now tag or rate portal content and view the tags and ratings. This allows to better organize, categorize, and find portal content, including custom content, if it is available in the portal. For example, users can tag or rate books in an online bookstore.
Learn more about tagging and rating portal content.
Integration with workflow management systems
WebSphere Portal now provides a single point of integration with workflow management systems, such as IBM WebSphere Process Server, through the Unified Task List. The Unified Task List is a portlet that aggregates tasks and activities from multiple systems in a visually appealing and highly configurable user interface. Portal users access the Unified Task List to view and claim pending tasks that they can complete to advance workflows.The Unified Task List is available from the WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Catalog and offers out-of-box integration with WebSphere Process Server. However, you can customize the Unified Task List to suit business needs by creating unique tasks providers, or services, that access, retrieve, and format tasks from any workflow management system.
Learn more about the Unified Task List portlet.
Virtualization
Virtualization technology can be used to mass-replicate identical OSs installed and configured with WebSphere Portal. VMware is fully supported in this version of WebSphere Portal.
Learn more about virtualization on Linux.
Learn more about virtualization on Windows.
Parent
What's new
Minor change fixed typo "ratting" with "rating"