Production Operations Guide

Propagation Topics

This chapter covers a range of topics related to WebLogic Portal propagation. We recommend that you read this chapter before you attempt to propagate a portal.

This chapter includes the following topics:

Flow of a Typical Propagation Session

Figure 6-1 shows the basic flow of a typical propagation session. The basic steps illustrated include:

Before You Begin

The following sections describe some preparation tasks to perform before propagating a portal application. For additional information about the propagation planning process, see Developing a Propagation Strategy.

Start the Administration Server

The Administration Server must be running when you perform a propagation to allow certain LDAP data to be updated. A propagation can cause the following kinds of LDAP data to be added, deleted, or updated: visitor roles, delegated administration roles, entitlement policies, and delegated administration policies.

Perform a Data Backup

Back up your WebLogic LDAP repository using the steps in the “Avoiding and Recovering from Server Failure” section of the WebLogic Server documentation.

Back up your database using the vendor tools appropriate for your environment. Save a copy of the deployed application that you are propagating; you will be deploying an EAR to the existing application, which will overwrite the current configuration.

Plan to Inactivate the System During the Import Process

Before you import a final inventory to a destination system, take steps to prevent users from changing portal data. When the final inventory is being committed to the destination server, any changes made through the WebLogic Portal Administration Console or certain WLP API calls (such as content management APIs) can lead to unwanted side effects, such as lost data.

The OnlineMaintenanceModeTask Ant task can be used to prevent changes to the destination server. You can also use the WebLogic Portal Administration Console to place a server in maintenance mode. To do this, select the Configuration Settings > Service Administration > Maintenance Mode. For detailed information on OnlineMaintenanceModeTask, see OnlineMaintenanceModeTask. Workshop for WebLogic does not provide a maintenance mode feature.

Install the Propagation Tools

The Workshop for WebLogic propagation feature is installed automatically when you install WebLogic Portal (unless you explicitly exclude it). The propagation Ant tasks require some additional configuration before you can use them. For information on installing and using the Ant tasks, see Using the Propagation Ant Tasks.

Configure Log Files (Optional)

For information on configuring verbose log files in Workshop for WebLogic, see Enabling Verbose Logging.

Deploy the J2EE Application (EAR)

If you created new resources for your web application using Workshop for WebLogic, including portlets, portals, books, pages, custom layouts, look and feels, menus, shells, themes, JSPs, or Java classes, you must deploy the J2EE application from the source system to the destination system at some point prior to committing the changes with the propagation tools.

When you deploy the J2EE application, changes reflected in the EAR file may or may not be propagated automatically, depending on whether your server is in production mode or development mode. For more information, see General Propagation Scenarios and Scenario 2: Redeploying an EAR file. For detailed information on deploying EAR files, see Deploying Portal Applications.

If you commit propagation changes without deploying the J2EE application, the inventory listing includes the new resources, but the resources are not displayed in the portal library on the destination system and the following destination database tables are not updated with new data:

For more information on these database tables and how they are used, see the Oracle WebLogic Portal Database Administrator Guide.

Make Required Manual Changes

While the propagation tools propagate most portal data, there are some exceptions. Any portal assets that are not propagated must be added to the destination server using the WebLogic Portal Administration Console.

What Kinds of Data Require Manual Changes?

In general, the propagation tools do not propagate the following kinds of data:

Where are Manual Changes Reported?

Manual changes are reported to you in the following places:

Propagation Reference Table

Table 6-1 provides a comprehensive list of the categories and types of data that comprise a portal and whether or not the propagation tools move them. Any type of data that is not propagated by the propagation tools is noted in the Notes column. Data that is not propagated might require a manual change to be made on the destination server. For more information on manual changes, see Make Required Manual Changes.

Security Information and Propagation

Security information consists generally of authentication data and authorization data. As Table 6-2 shows, authorization data consists of roles and policies, while authentication consists of users and groups.

Users and groups are never propagated by the propagation tools. In addition to user and group information, the propagation tools do not propagate the following:

Because roles contain user and group information, you need to consider how user and group information is stored for your staging and production system; these two systems may or may not share the same authentication repositories.

If your systems do not share the same authentication repositories for managing users and groups, then after propagating a portal, you must manually edit each role to add the appropriate users and groups on the destination system. If the systems do share the same authentication repositories, then no manual changes to roles need to be made after a propagation.

For more information on manual propagation changes, see Make Required Manual Changes.

Understanding Scope

You can think of a WebLogic Portal inventory as a large tree structure, with multiple levels of parent and child nodes. Each node in the tree represents the inventory for a part of the portal application. If a node is declared to be in scope, then that node and all of its descendents are in scope. That is, they will be included in the exported inventory file.

This section includes these topics:

Overview

If you do not want to propagate an entire portal application, you can use scoping to limit the propagated assets. The most common use cases for scoping include:

The Workshop for WebLogic based propagation tools and the propagation Ant tasks both support scoping. The Workshop for WebLogic propagation tools let you manually make scoping decisions by selecting and unselecting nodes in the merged inventory tree. The Ant tasks let you control scoping with a scope.properties file that specifies which portal items are considered to be in scope.

Why Use Scoping?

Performance is the primary use case for scoping. Because a scoped inventory reduces the overall size of an exported WebLogic Portal inventory, propagation tasks typically run faster. If you have a large content repository, you might not want to export it when you propagate a portal. In this case, you can move the content repository, and all of its content, out of scope.

Another reason to scope is security-related. You may want to exclude certain sensitive content from an inventory if you plan to transport that inventory through insecure channels.

What are the Risks of Scoping?

The primary risk associated with scoping is that a scoped inventory file can include assets with dependencies that cannot be resolved. When an inventory is scoped, entire nodes (and descendants of the nodes) are excluded from the inventory. As a result, if included artifacts depend on excluded artifacts, those dependencies cannot be resolved. Typically out of scope dependencies are reported as manual elections. By default the propagation servlet will fail on manual add elections.

Best Practices for Scoping

The following are best practices if you intend to consider scoping an inventory:

How to Set Scope

You can set the scope of a propagation in the Workshop for WebLogic based propagation tools and in the Ant tasks.

This section includes these topics:

Using Workshop for WebLogic to Set Scope

This section explains how to set scope using the New Propagation Session Wizard.

When you create a new Propagation Session, you select a source and a destination inventory to merge. Before the merge, however, you are given the chance to make scoping decisions in the Select Global Scope dialog, shown in Figure 6-2. As shown in the figure, when you select a node to be in scope, the node’s ancestors are automatically selected.

To make selections in the Select Global Scope dialog, you must first select the Limit the scope to the specified nodes checkbox.

Setting Scope with Ant Tasks

You can use the OnlineDownloadTask to scope an inventory file. This task takes a scope.properties file attribute. You can edit this file to include the items you want to include in the inventory file. If you do not specify a scope.properties file, then the entire enterprise application is considered to be in scope. For detailed information on the OnlineDownloadTask and other propagation Ant tasks, see Propagation Ant Task Reference.

The Effects of Scoping

WebLogic Portal gives you a great deal of freedom to scope your portal inventories. When you select an inventory node to be in or out of scope, that choice usually affects other nodes that are either dependent on or a dependent of the selected node. WebLogic Portal automatically determines these dependencies. In Workshop for WebLogic, you can see the dependencies visually: when you select a node, other related nodes are automatically selected.

This section helps you to understand the effects of four kinds of scoping decisions:

Scoping to the Enterprise Application Level

By default, all propagations are scoped to the Enterprise application level. This means that all of the artifacts that make up the portal that can be propagated are propagated. By default, the entire Enterprise application is in scope, as Figure 6-3 illustrates.

There are no preset scoping levels. Both the propagation tools and Ant tasks let you specify scoping however you want. The Ant tasks let you specify a scope.properties file, in which you specify which artifacts to propagate. (See also Understanding a Scope Property File.)

There are four major categories of portal artifacts that you can scope to:

Each of these top-level nodes are represented in the New Propagation Session wizard’s Select Global Scope dialog, as shown in Figure 6-4. Using this dialog, you can drill into one of the top-level categories to refine the level of scoping. However, as previously noted, the best practice is to scope only to one of the top-level categories, such as the Content Service.

Scoping to the Desktop Level

One of the most common scoping use cases is scoping to the desktop level. This means that you identify one or more specific desktops to be in scope. The rest of the enterprise application is then considered to be out of scope and is not propagated. As Figure 6-5 illustrates, when you scope to Desktop_1, the desktop and its children (books, pages, and so on) are placed in scope. Any other desktops and the rest of the Enterprise application are then out of scope. See What are the Risks of Scoping? for information on the risks of scoping at this level.

Scoping to a Repository

Another common use case it scoping to a repository. When you scope to a repository, the entire repository is propagated, including all types, folders, and content, as illustrated in Figure 6-6. Any other repositories are not propagated, and no other part of the Enterprise application is propagated.

Scoping to a Content Folder

When you scope to a folder in a content repository, that folder, its contents, and all of the folder’s parent folders are propagated. Note that the contents of parent folders are not propagated, only the parent folders themselves, as illustrated in Figure 6-7. See What are the Risks of Scoping? for information on the risks of scoping at this level.

Scope and Library Inheritance

When you propagate portal assets, such as desktops containing pages and books, new pages and books are added to the Portal Library if they do not already exist there.

The WebLogic Portal Administration Console organizes portal resources in a tree that consists of Library resources and desktop resources. Understanding the relationship between Library and desktop resources helps you to understand the effects and consequences of propagation.

Portal Asset Instances and Inheritance

The following text describes the relationships between the following instances of portal assets:

Creating a New Desktop and Disassembling to the Library

When you create a new desktop using the WebLogic Portal Administration Console, you can use an existing portal template. Using a template means that you will be taking the portal resources for your desktop directly from a .portal file that was created in Workshop for WebLogic. (The .portal file is also called the primary instance.) When you create a desktop, the portal assets are removed from the .portal file, placed in a database, and surfaced in both the Library and desktop trees of the WebLogic Portal Administration Console. Taking the assets from a new desktop instance and placing them in the Library is called disassembling.

At this point, the assets (books, pages, and so on) in the Library (Library instances) are hierarchically related to their corresponding desktop instances. A change to a Library resource, such as a name change, is automatically inherited by the corresponding desktop instance. On the other hand, a change to the desktop instance is not reflected back up the hierarchy.

New books and pages that you create in a desktop are not disassembled—they are considered to be private to that desktop.

Decoupling of Property Settings

If an administrator or a visitor (using Visitor Tools) changes the Book Properties of a book or the Page Properties of a page in a desktop, those property settings become decoupled from the settings in the parent book or page in the Library. Page properties include layout and theme, while Book Properties include menus and layout. These properties can be modified in the WebLogic Portal Administration Console. When a portal is propagated, any assets that are decoupled in the source application will remain decoupled in the destination.

For more details on the specific data propagated, see Propagation Reference Table.

Using Policies

Policies let you control how source and destination inventories are merged into a final inventory file. This section describes policies and presents examples to help you understand how to apply them.

This section includes the following topics:

Introduction

Policies let you specify how to handle the following three merge cases:

Through the propagation tools, you can set two kinds of policies:

Global Policy Examples

Figure 6-8 illustrates a simple, but common, example. In this case, the default global policies define how two inventories are merged. Portlets 2 and 3 on Desktop A are added to the destination’s Desktop A. Portlet 5 from Desktop B is also added. However, Portlet 6 on the destination is deleted, because it did not exist in Desktop B on source system.

Figure 6-9 shows the same source and destination system; however, in this case the global policy specifies that adds are ignored. In this case, Portlet 6 is removed from the destination desktop because it did not exist in the source desktop. None of the additional portlets from the source are added, because the global policy specifies that adds are to be ignored.

Local Policy Overrides

Figure 6-10 shows how a local policy overrides a global policy. In this example, the global policy is to accept adds; however, a local policy is placed on Portlet 1 in Desktop A. The local policy states that the portlet should be deleted from the destination. In this case, Portlet 1 on Desktop A is not propagated. The local policy overrides the global policy.

Using Local Policies with Desktops

In WebLogic Portal, multiple desktops can contain instances of the same library object, such as a portlet.

Because global policies can be overridden at the desktop level, it is possible that the policies for instances of the same library object (such as a portlet) might conflict. The propagation software resolves these conflicts as follows:

For example, consider this scenario: A user adds Page 1 to Book 2 on the source system, but another user adds the same Page 1 to Book 3 on the destination. The rules are defined such that additions to the source are added to the destination, and “deletions” on the source are ignored (that is, if an asset exists on the destination and not on the source, it remains on the destination). Because WebLogic Portal requires that a given page cannot exist in more than one book, the propagation tools resolve the conflict by adding Page 1 to Book 2, and removing it in Book 3 on the destination system.

For another example, consider the following scenario:

In this scenario, illustrated in Figure 6-11, there is a conflict between the local policy for Desktop A and the global policy inherited by Desktop B with respect to additions. Because Desktop B includes Portlet X, Portlet X is required in the propagation of Desktop B (Desktop B cannot be propagated properly without this portlet). Therefore, according to the rules stated previously, the library object for Portlet X will be included in the propagation, despite the policy override applied to Desktop A indicating that adds should be ignored.

Reporting Changes Based on Policies

When a propagation conflict is resolved by a propagation Ant task, the resolutions are listed in the log file that is created during processing. The Workshop for WebLogic based interface lists any changes that occurred in order to resolve conflicts in the Console view.

For information on log files, see Reviewing Log Files.

Previewing Changes and Tuning a Merged Inventory

The basic propagation process starts with a source inventory and a destination inventory. You then merge these two files into a merged inventory file using either Workshop for WebLogic or the propagation Ant tasks.

Before you generate and commit a final inventory file, you have an opportunity to examine the pending changes that will be made to the destination server. You can view these changes in the following ways:

User Customizations and Propagation

User customizations refer to changes a user makes to his or her own desktop settings. The typical propagation occurs from a staging environment to a production system. In this scenario, users typically do not have access to the staging environment, and no user customization changes that require propagation would exist. For this reason, user customizations are not propagated.

User customizations are preserved on the destination system, but when you propagate to a destination system, those customizations might be removed or modified on the destination server under certain conditions. For instance, an administrator might make changes through the WebLogic Portal Administration Console that potentially conflict with a given user’s customizations. For example, an administrator might delete a particular portlet from the portal that has been added by a user to one of their pages using the Visitor Tools. In this situation, the user’s customization is “lost” in the sense that the portlet no longer exists, and as such, will not appear in the user’s portal upon the next login.

Reviewing Log Files

Propagation operations and tasks generate log messages in the following locations:

Rolling Back an Import Process

The propagation tools are not transactional, and therefore do not support roll-back capability. If you must revert to a pre-propagated environment, use the backups that you created before beginning the propagation process. For more information, see Perform a Data Backup.

Federated Portal (WSRP) Propagation

This section discusses propagation of federated portals.

This section includes these topics:

Introduction

WebLogic Portal 10.2 and later versions support features of WSRP 2.0 that permit a more flexible and practical approach to propagation of federated portals. With WebLogic Portal 10.2 and later versions, the consumer applications in staging and production environments can point to separate producers. The primary advantage of this new capability is that you can create and modify remote (proxy) portlets in a staging environment in isolation from the production environment.

Before version 10.0, if you wanted to propagate WSRP consumer applications, the consumers on the source and destination systems had to point to the same producer. This configuration, which is described in detail in “WSRP Propagation” in the WebLogic Portal 9.2 Production Operations Guide, included several limitations. For detailed information on using WSRP with WebLogic Portal, see the Federated Portals Guide.

WSRP Propagation Procedure

If both the producer and consumer applications are at WebLogic Portal 10.2 or later versions (either new installations or upgrades), then propagation of consumers is fully supported. There is no requirement for the staging and production consumers to point to the same producer. This recommended configuration is illustrated in Figure 6-12. For detailed information on upgrading federated portals to WebLogic Portal 10.2 or later versions, see the WebLogic Portal Upgrade Guide.

The procedure for propagating a federated portal where both the producer and consumer applications have been upgraded to WebLogic Portal 10.2 or a later version is:

When the propagation is completed, the consumer portal in the production environment is functionally equivalent to the consumer portal in the staging environment.

If Only Producer(s) are Upgraded to WebLogic Portal 10.2 or Later Versions

The following steps are mandatory if you have upgraded a producer to WebLogic Portal 10.2 or later versions, but consumers(s) are not upgraded:

If Only Consumer(s) are Upgraded to WebLogic Portal 10.2 or Later Versions

If you upgrade only the consumer(s) to 10.2 or a later version, you are required to use the propagation model described in WSRP Propagation in the WebLogic Portal 9.2 Production Operations Guide. In this model, consumer applications in both staging and production environments must point to the same producer.

Listing Producer Handles

This section explains how to run the List Producer JSP utility (listProducers.jsp) on both the staging and production systems on which your consumer applications are deployed. This utility obtains the registration handles for producers that have been previously added to your consumers.

Updating Producer Registration Handles

This section explains how to run the Update Registrations JSP utility (updateRegistrations.jsp) on both the staging and production systems. This utility updates the registration handles for each consumer application the currently references a given producer.

Increasing the Default Upload File Size

The propagation management servlet has a configuration setting to help mitigate “denial of service” attacks. The servlet is configured with a maximum size allowed for uploaded files (files uploaded over HTTP). By default, this is set to 10 megabytes. If any given file inside the inventory ZIP file is larger than this value, it will be rejected. This section explains how to either work around this limitation or change the propagation servlet’s configuration to allow larger files.

Copying the Inventory to the Server

The simplest workaround to this file size limit is to physically copy your file, through FTP or another means, from the source to the destination server. After you copy the file to the destination, you can use the OnlineUploadTask’s readFromServerFileSystem attribute to perform the upload. For information on this task, see OnlineUploadTask.

Modifying a Deployment Plan

You can override the 10 megabyte default file upload limit using a deployment plan. A deployment plan is an optional XML file that configures an application for deployment to WebLogic Server. A deployment plan works by setting property values that would normally be defined in the WebLogic Server deployment descriptors, or by overriding context parameter values already defined in a WebLogic Server deployment descriptor.

To modify the file size limit using a deployment plan, follow these steps:

Modifying the web.xml File

You can configure the file upload size directly in the propagation application’s web.xml file. To modify this file, do the following:

Configuring the Propagation Servlet

A number of configuration parameters that affect the propagation servlet are specified in the propagation web application’s web.xml file. The preferred method for modifying these parameters is by using a deployment plan.

A deployment plan is an optional XML file that configures an application for deployment to WebLogic Server. A deployment plan works by setting property values that would normally be defined in the WebLogic Server deployment descriptors, or by overriding context parameter values already defined in a WebLogic Server deployment descriptor.

The following sections show context parameters for the propagation application’s web.xml file. To override these parameters, use a deployment plan. The parameters are used to set the following configurations:

Configuring the Inventory Temporary Directory

The inventoryWorkingFolder parameter shown in Listing 6-4 specifies a folder on the server where the propagation tools place certain runtime data, such as inventory exports. For detailed information on configuring the temporary space used on the server during propagation, see Configuring Temporary Space.

context-param>
    <description>Base folder path for runtime data, such as inventory exports.
    </description>
    <param-name>inventoryWorkingFolder</param-name>
    <param-value>D:\dev\src\wlp\propagation\test\inventories</param-value>
</context-param>

Adding Description Text

The example stanza shown in Listing 6-5 is used to specify a short description to be placed in the export.properties file. This file contains summary information about the inventory; including who exported it, when it was exported, how many nodes are in the export, and other information.

<context-param>
    <description>The name of the operating environment.</description>
    <param-name>environment_name</param-name>
    <param-value>Staging</param-value>
  </context-param>

Enabling Verbose Logging

The example stanza shown in Listing 6-6 is used to enable or disable verbose logging.

<context-param>
    <description>Enable verbose logging for the servlet.</description>
    <param-name>enable_verbose_logging</param-name>
    <param-value>true</param-value>
  </context-param>

Specifying the Verbose Log File Location

The example stanza shown in Listing 6-5 is used to specify the location of the verbose log file.

<context-param>
    <description>Specify the folder to put verbose logs.</description>
    <param-name>verbose_log_folder</param-name>
    <param-value>D:/dev/src/wlp/propagation/test/inventories</param-value>
  </context-param>

Configuring Temporary Space

Certain propagation operations, such as creating an inventory file or combining two inventories, write temporary files to the file system. The temporary location where these files are written depends on the type of operation performed. This section explains how this temporary space is created and how to configure it.

Temporary Space for Online Operations

Online propagation operations take place on the server and include tasks such as uploading and committing inventories. (see Overview of Online Tasks). Temporary space is created for online operations according to an algorithm where the first available of the following locations is used:

Temporary Space for Offline Operations

Offline propagation operations take place outside the context of a server and include tasks such as combining and differencing inventories. (see Overview of Offline Tasks). For offline operations, temporary space is specified by the Temporary space is created for offline operations system property java.io.tempdir.

Propagating Datasync Data in Development Mode

Applications in development mode write datasync files to the filesystem. If you propagate to an application in development mode and datasync resources are marked to be deleted then be aware that the corresponding datasync files will be deleted from the filesystem. See Datasync Definition Usage During Development for more information.