10 Managing Oracle WebCenter Services

This chapter provides an overview of managing Oracle WebCenter services in WebCenter applications. It also describes how to configure and manage the WebCenter and MDS repositories.

This chapter includes the following sections:

Audience

The content of this chapter is intended for Fusion Middleware administrators (users granted the Admin or Operator role through the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console). For more information, see Section 1.8, "Understanding Administrative Operations, Roles, and Tools."

10.1 Introduction to Managing Services

WebCenter exposes collaborative, social networking, and personal productivity features through services, which, in turn, expose subsets of their features and functionality through task flows. Task flows provide reusable functionality that may expose all or a subset of the features available from a particular service.

Services provide a variety of functionality in support of personal and team objectives. For example, the Documents service provides features for uploading and managing content. The Discussions service provides features for creating, managing, and participating in discussion forums.

Always use Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST command-line tool to review and configure back-end services for WebCenter applications. Any changes that you make to WebCenter applications, post deployment, are stored in the MDS metatdata store as customizations. For more information, see Section 1.3.5, "Oracle WebCenter Configuration Considerations."

Note:

Changes that you make to WebCenter services configuration, through Fusion Middleware Control or using WLST, are not dynamic so you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is deployed for your changes to take effect. For more information, see Section 8.2, "Starting and Stopping Managed Servers for WebCenter Application Deployments."

10.2 Setting Up the WebCenter Repository

The Events, Links, Lists, People Connections, and Tags services store information in the WebCenter repository, which is a database with the WebCenter schema installed. The WebCenter schema is included with the product. To install the WebCenter schema, follow the steps described in the section, "Installing Oracle WebCenter" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle WebCenter.

Note:

For WebCenter Spaces, a WebCenter repository is configured out-of-the-box, and therefore, the repository connection does not require reconfiguration.

Table 10-1 describes what information these services store in the WebCenter repository. For more information, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.

For information on backing up and migrating this information, see Chapter 31, "Managing Export, Import, Backup, and Recovery of WebCenter."

Table 10-1 WebCenter Services Storing Content in WebCenter Repository

WebCenter Services Description Content Stored in WebCenter Repository WebCenter Spaces
Custom WebCenter Application

Events

Scheduled appointments, meetings, presentations, or any other kind of gathering for a particular group space.

Group space members can view such events on the group space's dedicated Events page or in any Events task flow that is located on a page in the group space.

Group space event details, such as, meetings, appointments, presentations, and so on.

Note: Personal events are stored in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and 2007.

Yes

No

Links

Links connect different pieces of previously unlinked information, producing context between items. As users build webs of related information, this knowledge can be communicated to the wider group.

Link maps, that is, relationship information such as what object is linked to what other object.

Yes

Yes

Lists

Enables users to track issues, capture project milestones, publish project assignments, and so on.

List data, that is, column values in List rows.

Yes

No

Tags

Enables users to apply their own meaningful terms to items, making those items more easily discoverable in search results and the Tag Center - a dynamically generated page that displays all the tags users have added.

Resources, bookmarks created on resources, and tag words used in each bookmark.

Yes

Yes


For custom WebCenter applications, you must set up a database connection to the WebCenter repository. This database connection can be of type JDBC Data Source or JDBC URL. For information on different types of data sources, see the section, "What You May Need to Know About Database Connections and Application Security Migration When Deploying WebCenter Applications" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.

Depending on the connection type used in an application, do one of the following:

In a typical business scenario, applications are deployed to different managed servers, and multiple databases are used as repositories for the applications. The repository that you use in a development environment is different from that in a production environment, and therefore, when migrating custom WebCenter applications from development to production, you must reconfigure the database connection.

When a repository connection is reconfigured, the local datasource file and the *-jdbc.xml file in the WEB-INF directory of the WAR file are updated with the new connection details. However, the JNDI Name and data source name remain the same. If you change the JNDI Name for any reason, then you must also update the adf-config.xml file. The JNDI name must be of the form jdbc/connection-nameDS. For example, if the application has a connection name connection1, then the JNDI name is jdbc/connection1DS.

10.3 Setting Up the MDS Repository

Some WebCenter services, such as Notes, RSS News Feed, Recent Activities, Worklist, Lists, Events, Search, Page, and Mail store information in the MDS repository. To enable these services in WebCenter applications you must configure the MDS repository. For information, see Section 7.1.3.2, "Creating and Registering the Metadata Service Repository."