Oracle9iAS
Portal 3.0.9 Release Notes May 2001 |
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For the latest release note updates, visit the Oracle Technology Network and click the Documentation tab. |
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Installation and Setup Administration
Documentation
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Usage Notes
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To facilitate moving to Release 3.0 from previous versions of Oracle Portal (previously known as WebDB), you can download upgrade scripts and their documentation from the Oracle Technology Network on the Support tab. |
If users are having trouble logging in, the Portal administrator should refer to the troubleshooting section of the Oracle Portal 3.0.9 Configuration Guide, which is available from the Oracle Technology Network on the Documentation tab. |
If you set up your Internet Explorer 5 browser to have the highest possible security, then you may experience problems in displaying the Oracle Portal public home page. You may need to reduce the security setting in Internet Explorer 5 to see the Oracle Portal home page. You can change your security settings from the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog in Internet Explorer. |
The following are known issues with the PL/SQL Gateway:
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Portal pages The following enhancements have been made to Portal pages:
Local portlet store The portlet metadata is now stored within Oracle Portal in the Portlet Repository. Having the metadata in the repository provides the following benefits:
New proxy server parameter for Parallel Page Engine A new parameter (proxyIgnore) has been added to the initArgs of the Parallel Page Engine. This parameter identifies the domain which will be used to compare against the host being contacted for data. If the domains match, then the proxy server is not used. If the domains do not match, then the proxy server is used. This method enables Oracle Portal to be set up to use Web providers outside the firewall, while not taking the proxy server hit for internal connections. Content areas The following enhancements have been made to content areas:
Alternate way to set up Oracle Portal in HTTPS mode Portal can be set up to use the HTTPS protocol only between the browser and the middle tier, where the security is needed. Communication between the middle tier and the database can now be handled using HTTP and thus avoiding the HTTPS performance overhead. Multi-byte character user names User and group names can now be created in multi-byte character sets. Group names are limited to 30 characters and user names are limited to 50 characters. This feature also provides better support for user names defined in an external repository, such as LDAP, where the user name may include spaces or other special characters (e.g., in an email address). Note: The following restrictions apply to the defining of user and group names:
These limitations will be addressed in a future release. Reorganization of administrative portlets To improve usability, the portlets on the Administration page have been reorganized to improve the navigation experience and clarify the separation of functions and repositories. The following are the changes that have been made:
Compatibility between different versions of Oracle Portal and Login Server Oracle Portal 3.0.9 is now compatible with Login Server 3.0.6 through 3.0.9. Similarly, the Login Server 3.0.9 can support Oracle Portal 3.0.6 through 3.0.9. Support for third party single sign on systems The Login Server provides APIs that can be implemented to achieve integration with third party SSO systems. This feature adds new APIs to the external authentication specification and requires changes to existing custom implementations. Support for basic authentication The Login Server provides support for external applications that require basic authentication. Hiding fields in the login screen To improve usability, the Login Server now supports hiding certain extra fields in the external application login screen from the end user. The Login Server administrator can change this behavior while creating or editing external applications. Session cleanup job fixed In previous versions, inactive sessions were not always terminated by the session cleanup job. The problem has been fixed in Oracle Portal 3.0.9. All inactive sessions -- those that have been logged out -- are now cleaned up. Any active sessions which are older than the configured expiration time (defaulting to 1 week) are also cleaned up. For more information on managing session cleanup, refer to the Oracle Portal 3.0.9 Configuration Guide, which is available from the Oracle Technology Network on the Documentation tab. Portal applications The new data component is available in Beta with 3.0.9. The data component provides spreadsheet-like functions for Portal users. To enable the data component, click the Administer tab on the Portal Home page and click Global Settings. On the Global Settings page, check Data Component in the Beta Features section. |
For white papers, demonstrations, a tutorial, documented examples, and our latest documentation, please visit the Oracle Technology Network and go to the Documentation tab. |
Oracle Portal 3.0.9 includes translated page runtime help files. The translated help files are stored in subdirectories of ORACLE_HOME/portal30/doc. To install these translated help files, do the following:
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For information on the products and services provided by Oracle9iAS Portal partners, please visit the Oracle9iAS Portal Partner Initiatives section of www.oracle.com. |
When using an 8.1.6 version of the database on Windows NT, if you specify either of the following options, a database crash can occur:
This problem is fixed in 8.1.7 and 8.1.6.2 of the database. |
The following restrictions apply to the names of documents that you are uploading into the repository:
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The complete Portal Development Kit (PL/SQL and Java) is updated regularly and can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology Network. The Java Portal Development Kit release 1.5 is now included as a component of Oracle Portal. Detailed release notes are included in the jpdk.zip file which can be found in <IAS_HOME>/portal30/jpdk. Major features of this release include:
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The following are known issues with Oracle Portal export/import:
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The following are known limitations for forms applications:
See also: For more information on updatable views, refer to the Oracle8i documentation. |
The image for tables in the recent objects portlet is missing. Users can copy table.gif to rtable.gif in their image directory to fix the problem. These images are located in <Oracle9iAS_Home>/portal30/images. |
The Image Enhanced Charting feature is Beta in this release. To enable it, click the Administer tab on the Portal Home page and click Global Settings. On the Global Settings page, check Image Charts From Query Wizard in the Beta Features section. |
Center alignment of tabs within a page region is not supported for this release. |
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The Navigator portlets are available in the portlet repository. If you inadvertently remove the portlets from the Navigator, you can add them back from the repository. Note: The Navigator portlets are specifically designed for use on the Navigator pages. If you add them to pages outside of the Navigator, you may get unexpected behavior. Therefore, it is recommended that you avoid placing the Navigator portlets on pages outside of the Navigator. |
The Oracle Portal Community portlets enable you to plug into the ever growing Oracle Portal Community. Through the Oracle Portal Community portlets, you can access useful resources such as discussion forums, the latest Portal Development Kit, Portal Studio, and the Portal Catalog. The Oracle Portal Community Portlets can also render dynamic content. In order to access this dynamic content, you must perform the following steps:
Two of the community portlets cache their content for a day, which means they will not immediately change. The Developer News portlet on the Oracle Portal Home Page and the Product News portlet (the leftmost portlet) on the Welcome page are two such portlets. To immediately refresh these portlets, you need to edit these two pages as follows:
You should now see both the Welcome page and the Oracle Portal Home Page render the Community portlets with dynamic content. You can tell the static content by the fact that it contains specific mentions that the network access feature is currently disabled. If the portlet does not say that, then you know that it is rendering dynamic content from the Oracle Portal Community site. If the Welcome page is still rendering static content, it is probably because of the Page Caching setting. To check the Page Caching, find the Welcome page in the Navigator, click the Edit link, and go to the Main tab. If the Page Caching is set to Cache page definition and content, the page will refresh only after the specified period of time. |
When creating or editing a page and exposing the page as a portlet, make sure that the page portlet is not added back to the page itself from the Add Portlet Screen. In addition, circular page references are not allowed. For example, suppose you create pages A and B, and publish each one as a portlet. You cannot now add the portlet of page A to page B and the portlet of page B to page A. |
When using a template for a page, the tags #PAGE.BGCOLOR# and #PAGE.BGIMAGE# will be replaced by the page style class element PageBg. If you specify both Page Color and Page Background Image in the page style, PageBg sets both the background color and the image for the page. |
When you display the portlet repository by clicking the Display Portlet Repository link from the Administer tab, you might not be able to see the newly registered providers. This problem occurs because the Seeded Providers and the Other Providers folders in the repository do not have a category associated with them. The way to work around this problem is as follows: Note: You must have administrator privileges to perform this task.
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The portlet record, which contains portlet metadata and is returned by providers in calls to their get_portlet and get_portlet_list functions, has been extended. There are now four additional fields.
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