Preface

This manual describes how to build portlets for Oracle Portal (Oracle Portal) using a variety of tools and technologies. This manual includes information that helps you understand the various technology choices open to you, choose the technology that best meets your requirements, and use the appropriate tools to build and deploy your portlets.

Intended Audience

This manual is intended primarily for portal developers, but page designers may also find it useful. This manual guides you through the process of first understanding and choosing a portlet technology, and then building your portlets with that technology.

What Is a Portal Developer? A portal developer is a user who writes code to help make a portal meet the specific requirements of an organization. For example, a portal developer may build portlets and make them available to page designers and other users for inclusion on their pages. This type of portal developer is also referred to as a portlet developer. A portal developer may also use the public APIs provided with OracleAS Portal to perform certain portal tasks programmatically, rather than through the product's user interface. A portal developer will generally, although not always, be someone with at least some programming knowledge. The privileges assigned to a portal developer depend on the type of tasks that developer performs.

What Is a Portlet Developer? A portlet developer is a user with the following global privileges: Create All Portal DB Providers and Manage All Shared Components. Since OracleAS Portal offers such a wide spectrum of tools and technologies for building portlets, a portlet developer may or may not have substantial programming background.

Note:

You can find information on using Portlet Builder in Appendix A "Creating Portlets with the Portlet Builder" of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.4) in the Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2 (10.1.2.0.2) library located on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) (http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/appserver.html).

What Is a Page Designer? A page designer, also known as a page manager, is a user with the Manage privilege on a page. A user with this privilege can perform any action on the page and can create sub-pages under the page. The page designer is often responsible for designing the layout (or region configuration) of the page and assigning privileges on the page to other users (for example, to determine who can add content to the page).

The scope of a page designer's control over a page may be limited if the page is based on a template.

For information about the different privileges in Oracle Portal and how these affect the tasks you can perform, see the Oracle Portal User's Guide.

Note:

For the portable document format (PDF) version of this manual, when a URL breaks onto two lines, the full URL data is not sent to the browser when you click it. To get to the correct target of any URL included in the PDF, copy and paste the URL into your browser's address field. In the HTML version of this manual, you can click a link to directly display its target in your browser.

Documentation Accessibility

For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/accessibility/index.html.

Access to Oracle Support

Oracle customers have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit http://www.oracle.com/support/contact.html or visit http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/support.html if you are hearing impaired.

Related Documents

For more information, see the following manuals in the Oracle Portal documentation set:

• Oracle Fusion Middleware Release Notes

• Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Portal

• Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Portal

Note:

You can find all documentation related to Oracle Portal on the Oracle Fusion Middleware Documentation Library.

You may also find the following manuals in the Oracle Application Server documentation set useful:

• Oracle Fusion Middleware Concepts

• Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle HTTP Server

• Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Web Cache

• Oracle Fusion Middleware PL/SQL Web Toolkit Reference

Note:

You can find documentation related to Oracle Application Server on OTN (http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/index.html).

Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Convention	Meaning
boldface	Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.
italic	Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.
monospace	Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.
< >	Angle brackets enclose user-supplied names.
[ ]	Brackets enclose optional clauses from which you can choose one or none.
...	Ellipsis points in an example mean that information not directly related to the example has been omitted.
MW_HOME	Represents the full path of the Middleware home.
ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the Oracle home.
ORACLE_INSTANCE	Represents the full path of the instance home associated with ORACLE_HOME.
INFRA_ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the Oracle Application Server Infrastructure Oracle home, and is used where it is necessary to distinguish between the middle tier, Oracle Application Server Infrastructure, or Oracle Metadata Repository.
METADATA_REP_ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the OracleAS Infrastructure home containing the Oracle Metadata Repository, and is used where it is necessary to distinguish between the middle tier, Oracle Application Server Infrastructure, or Oracle Metadata Repository.