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What's new - Portal v8


Managed pages

Portal v8.0 supports managed pages, which are portal pages stored in Web Content Manager, allowng one to apply web content features like workflow, version control, and syndication to 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. . Syndication handles transfers from stage to production. Related artifacts and content are transferred at the same time.


OpenID

Portal v8 supports use of 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.

  1. Community pages
  2. Community associations
  3. Community association APIs


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...


Unified Task List

Access tasks from multiple business process management solutions from a single user interface. 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.


Theme

Theme modules can enable and disable features such as search. For example, in a staging or dev environment, authors need the capability to edit content in context. However, on the delivery or live site, authors should not be able to edit content. The same theme is used in both the dev environment and the live environment. The only difference is which modules are included.


Mobile Portal Theme

The WebSphere Portal Mobile Experience WebKit theme includes code for navigation and page layout designed specifically for WebKit mobile devices. The mobile theme includes:

The mobile theme is available on the Lotus and WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Catalog.


Web Experience Factory builders

Web Experience Factory includes smartphone builders and samples for generating mobile portlets and pages. Builders include:


Tivoli Access Manager WebSEAL

The WebSEAL virtual host junction replaces the transparent and non-transparent junctions.

Enhanced TAI Plus replaces TAMTrustAssociationInterceptorPlus


Installation

The IBM Installation Manager replaces the InstallShield for installation.

The IBM Installation Manager replaces the WebSphere Portal Update Installer (PUI) for installing interim fixes and fix packs.

We can change the context root and URI during the installation. You must run some additional tasks after installation to change the context root for the portlets.


server1

server1 is no longer needed in WebSphere Portal v8.0 and has been removed.

In previous releases, you needed to start WAS server1 before we can start WebSphere Portal. server1 was also needed to access the WAS admin console. In WebSphere Portal v8.0, we can start the portal server and access the WAS admin console directly.


Integrate with IBM Sametime

The Sametime Proxy replaced Sametime Links. Sametime Web 2.0 Contact List has replaced the Who Is Here and Sametime Contact List portlets.


Portlets moved to the Business Solutions Catalog

The following Business portlets have been moved to the Business Solutions Catalog:


Portal Scripting Interface continues to support JACL

WAS continues to support the JACL v7.0 syntax. Therefore WebSphere Portal als continues JACL support. We can continue using JACL scripts with the Portal Scripting Interface.


Client-side aggregation

The Portal 8.0 and Portal 7.0.0.2 themes do not support client-side aggregation (CSA). The Page Builder theme, which is supported with Portal 8.0, is the primary theme that supports CSA.


Features no longer supported

Policy Editor portlet for Mail CPP portlet is no longer shipped in WebSphere Portal v8.0
Composite applications Start with v8.0, WebSphere Portal no longer supports Composite applications. We can still use the portal XML configuration interface to do this type of work.
Computer Associates eTrust SiteMinder eTrust SiteMinder installations are not supported in this release.
Domino Extended Product Portlet wizard The configuration wizard to configure the Domino and Extended Product portlet was supported with the InstallShield. Because the IBM Installation Manager is now supported, the Domino and Extended Product portlet configuration wizard is no longer supported.
Integration with the IBM Mashup Center WebSphere Portal v8.0 provides direct support for widget integration to portal pages, which enables development of mashup style applications. WebSphere Portal V8.0 does not support promotion of assets from the IBM Mashup Center catalog directly into the portal.
Site management Earlier versions of WebSphere Portal provided the Resource Manager portlet for performing site management. With v8.0 of WebSphere Portal and Web Content Manager, this site management functionality has been replaced by the new functionality for managing pages.
Session persistence on Struts portlets Struts portlets do not support session replication in WebSphere Portal v8.0.


Deprecated features

SOAP support for remote search configuration SOAP support for remote search services has been deprecated with WebSphere Portal v8.0. EJB is still supported.

Login screen Login screens have been deprecated. To customize your login process, use custom authentication filters instead of login screens.
Share private pages


Deprecated Business portlets

The following Business portlets were removed in WebSphere Portal v8:


Deprecated Sametime portlets

The following Sametime portlets were removed in WebSphere Portal v8:


Deprecated Themes and Tags

The following portal themes and tags were removed in WebSphere Portal v8: