Oracle9iAS Portal 3.0.9 Release Notes May 2001

Contents
For the latest release note updates, visit the Oracle Technology Network and click the Documentation tab.
Installation and Setup Installation Administration Upgrading from previous releases Login troubleshooting High security in Internet Explorer 5 PL/SQL Gateway Documentation New features in Oracle Portal 3.0.9 Additional information Translated online help Oracle9iAS Portal partners	Usage Notes In-place rendering of URLs Document name restrictions Portal Development Kit Oracle Portal export/import Forms limitations Recent objects portlet Charts Center alignment of tabs National Language Support Navigator portlets Oracle Portal Community portlets Publishing pages as portlets Page templates Portlet repository Changes to portlet record

Installation

Prior to installing Oracle Portal, you should ensure that the value of the SHARE_POOL_SIZE parameter in your init.ora file is in digits, not an abbreviated format. For example, if you are allocating 100 Mb for SHARE_POOL_SIZE, you would specify the value as follows: SHARE_POOL_SIZE=104857600 If you specify the value in megabytes (e.g., 100MB), it will not be recognized by the Oracle Portal Configuration Assistant. On the Linux platform, you must ensure that KornShell (ksh) is installed and available before starting the Oracle9iAS Portal Installation. Some flavors of Linux do not have KornShell installed by default. The loadjava utility specifically requires ksh for loading the java objects. For the prerequisites for Oracle Portal installation, please refer to the Oracle9iAS Installation Guide. If you have any trouble with the installation, 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. Ignore the following errors at the end of the installation log file, install.log: mod_plsql : *** NOT WORKING *** Exception in Enabler Validation in SSO: ORA-00903: invalid table name Exception in Partner Application Validation: ORA-00903: invalid table name Ignore the following error in the log file, wvinssys.log: grant exempt access policy to portal30   * ERROR at line 1: ORA-00990: missing or invalid privilege

Upgrading from previous releases

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.

Login troubleshooting

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.

High security in Internet Explorer 5

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.

PL/SQL Gateway

The following are known issues with the PL/SQL Gateway: The Oracle Client dependencies in the Oracle home of Oracle9iAS installations is 8.1.7.0.0. On Windows NT, the mod_plsql component requires a minimum patch set of 8.1.7.1.1 in the Oracle9iAS home. A corresponding patch needs to be applied to the Oracle Portal database as well. If you are running an 8.1.7 database, you need to upgrade to 8.1.7.1.1. If you are using an 8.1.6 database, you need to upgrade to 8.1.6.3.1. Please refer to bug number 1432961 for more details. Note: Internal testing could not simulate any issues on other platforms, but if you are facing stability issues with Oracle9iAS mod_plsql on other platforms, please apply the required patches to your Oracle9iAS and Oracle installations. If you are running Oracle9iAS-based mod_PLSQL applications (e.g., Oracle Portal), please note that the upgrade to 8.1.7.1 will reinstall the default OWA packages provided with the database. These packages are older than the ones provided with Oracle9iAS Portal and will cause issues while running some components of Oracle Portal (see bug number 1745320 for more detail). To get around this problem, you will need to reinstall the OWA packages from Oracle9iAS at the end of the upgrade. If you have not yet upgraded to 8.1.7.1, you can edit the file $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/catproc.sql and comment out the line which reads: @@owacomm.sql By making this change to the upgrade script, you will prevent it from reloading the database provided OWA packages; instead the OWA packages already loaded in the database from Oracle9iAS will be preserved. Note: If you reinstall the OWA packages, it is recommended that you recompile all of the dependent objects, which are invalidated because of the change to the OWA packages. If you are running the Apache HTTP server on a single Windows NT machine to access a Portal instance, you must implement a work around to start more than one HTTP server. The only way to start more than one HTTP server on Windows NT is to start the listener from a console window. In the console window, you should first set the WV_GATEWAY_CFG environment variable to point to the wdbsvr.app file, which has the required DAD configuration information. After that, you can use the following command to start the listener: Apache -k start

New features in Oracle Portal 3.0.9

Portal pages The following enhancements have been made to Portal pages: The Page Edit/Customization user interface has been modified as follows: An action bar has been added for the hide, show, delete, and move operations. Check boxes are now used to select the portlet or tab upon which the action is to be performed. The Customize for Others mode is now reached through an Edit Page link on the page banner. The Edit Page link only appears for authorized users (such as the page owner or Portal administrator). Edit Page allows you to modify the default view of a page and its portlets and to define page access privileges. Users with the Customize (Full) privilege on a page (or higher) can now easily rearrange the order of portlets and tabs. The Add Portlets page now appears in the full browser window. In previous releases, Add Portlets appeared as a popup window. Users with Customization privileges are allowed to move any portlets; portlets that are provided in the default view of the page as well as portlets that they add themselves. Moving tabs from one region to another is not currently supported. The Page, Style, and Layout APIs have now been made public. These APIs will be made available through the Portal Development Kit. 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: Enhances performance because the metadata is stored locally. Provides greater security because administrators can now secure portlets on portal pages as well as in the repository and the Add Portlet page. If the page is configured to use the cache, it is now being invalidated based upon changes in the Page, Provider Record, Template, or Security. When a portlet times out, the time-out and time-out messages are looked for in the portlet repository first. If these values are not defined there, then the provider registry is checked. If the values are not defined there, then they are taken from Parallel Page Engine settings. 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: The Content Area Home, Administration, and Navigator links have been removed from design time pages (Edit Item, Edit Folder, etc.). The Folder portlet can now be edited in place. A personal folder portlet has been added. You can now perform the following operations on multiple objects with a single action: copy, move, and delete items or folders change item or folder category and assign perspectives These operations are available from the Bulk Actions interface, which can be launched from the Navigator, Search Results page, or Folder edit mode. API's have been added for editing items, and creating categories and perspectives. You can show/hide and order items based upon the following: folder/item types categories perspectives The content area administrator can choose to hide or show the following objects, and control the order in which they appear in selection boxes: folder types item types categories perspectives Users will not be able to create items or folders of a hidden type, or assign hidden categories and perspectives. Hiding one of these objects will not affect items or folders that already use it. Search results are displayed in a portlet. The portlet can be added to any portal page (a default Search Results page is provided). The portlet can be customized to control the information that appears in each listing. Portal administrators can also replace the default Advanced Search page with a custom page. The custom page will be called whenever the Advanced Search link is clicked. 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: You cannot use the following special characters: semicolon (;) single quote (') tilde (~) If a user is created with a user name not starting with the characters A-Z, then they will have the following problems: They will not be able to create personal folders because personal folders are currently constrained to begin with the letters A-Z. Pages that they create will not be listed under My Pages in the Navigator. 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: In the User portlet, Create New User creates a user on the Login Server as before, but the Edit User link now also edits the Login Server's user entry. In previous versions, this Edit User would edit the Portal user's profile information. This portlet is provided by the Login Server provider. A new portlet called Portal User Profile has been added to the page. This portlet provides the means to edit the user's Portal Profile, which formerly was edited via Edit User in the User portlet. This portlet takes you to the page with the four tabs: Main, Preferences, Contact Info, and Privileges, which used to be accessed through the User portlet. A new portlet called Login Server Administration has been added to the page. This portlet provides links to the Login Server administrative functions (Edit Login Server Configuration, Administer Partner Applications, and Administer External Applications) that used to be accessible from the Login Server Administration menu on the Login Server. The Home links have been removed from the Login Server pages when they are accessed from Oracle Portal. Closing the Login Server pages/dialogs returns control to Oracle Portal, simplifying the navigation between functions. 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.

Additional information

For white papers, demonstrations, a tutorial, documented examples, and our latest documentation, please visit the Oracle Technology Network and go to the Documentation tab.

Translated online help

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: Make backup copies of the English versions of the HTML files in ORACLE_HOME/portal30/doc. If you ever need to revert back to the English versions of the help files, you can restore this backup. Copy the files from the appropriate language subdirectory to ORACLE_HOME/portal30/doc. The table below lists the language subdirectories and the languages they support. These subdirectories are located under ORACLE_HOME/portal30/doc. Note: After performing this procedure, the page runtime help files will appear in the appropriate language. All other help files will continue to appear in English. Language Subdirectory Language Subdirectory Czech cs Polish pl German d Portuguese pt Danish dk Brazilian Portuguese ptb Spanish e Romanian ro Greek el Russian ru French f Swedish s Hungarian hu Finnish sf Italian i Slovak sk Japanese ja Thai th Korean ko Turkish tr Norwegian n Chinese (simplified) zhs Dutch nl Chinese (traditional) zht Hebrew iw Arabic ar

Oracle9iAS Portal partners

For information on the products and services provided by Oracle9iAS Portal partners, please visit the Oracle9iAS Portal Partner Initiatives section of www.oracle.com.

In-place rendering of URLs in content areas

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: The Link That Displays Item In Folder Area option for URL items The Display Folder In Content Area Page option for a URL folder in a content area This problem is fixed in 8.1.7 and 8.1.6.2 of the database.

Document name restrictions

The following restrictions apply to the names of documents that you are uploading into the repository: Filenames must be 80 characters or less. Filenames must not include any of these characters: \ / : * ? < > | " % # + Filenames can include spaces and any of these characters: ! @ ~ & . $ ^ ( ) - _ ` ' [ ] { } ; =

Portal Development Kit

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: additional support for multibyte content including multibyte URL parameters a database personalization manager support for mobile content including a new mode for rendering menu links on mobile devices support for portals operating in a hosted environment a simplified subscription model

Oracle Portal export/import

The following are known issues with Oracle Portal export/import: When exporting/importing a content area on an NT machine with the database residing on Solaris, a two-task conversion error (ORA-03120) occurs. A workaround to this problem is to run the Solaris scripts (contexp.csh and contimp.csh) on a Solaris machine instead of using the NT scripts (contexp.cmd and contimp.cmd). See also: For more information, see the "Exporting and importing in Oracle Portal" Help topic in the Oracle Portal Online Help Content Area. If the database in which Oracle9iAS Portal resides is 8.1.6, then the Oracle9iAS Portal export/import utilities will fail with an invalid column name exception. The reason for this failure is that the version of the database client that comes with Oracle9iAS is 8.1.7. The 8.1.7 export/import utilities are incompatible with an 8.1.6 database. As a workaround, set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable to point to the database (8.1.6) home prior to performing Oracle Portal export/import operation. Currently, export/import does not work in a hosted environment. A separate patch will be forthcoming on this issue. If you attempt to import pages into a portal schema and the portal schema password is not the same as the portal schema name, the page import script, pageimp.csh, fails. To work around this problem, you can edit pageimp.csh as follows (change is in bold). Original version: case -p:   shift   set sys_password = $argv[$i]   shift   breaksw  Revised version: case -p:   shift   set portal_password = $argv[$i]   shift   breaksw

Forms limitations

The following are known limitations for forms applications: The use of database links is only certified for Oracle 8i databases. You may experience unexpected behavior if you use database links to databases other than Oracle 8i (e.g., Oracle 7.3) User defined object types are not supported at this time. The following is a list of datatypes and their support status: Datatypes Supported BLOB Yes CHAR Yes CLOB No DATE Yes LONG No LONG RAW No MLSLABEL No NCHAR No NCLOB No NUMBER Yes NVARCHAR No NVARCHAR2 No RAW No ROWID No UNDEFINED No VARCHAR Yes VARCHAR2 Yes The following is a list of interMedia object types and their support status: Object type Support status ORDIMAGE Yes ORDAUDIO No ORDVIDEO No Custom object types No The maximum number of items (columns in a table or view plus buttons and other elements) on which a form can be based is 200. Forms built on tables/views and master/detail forms can be created only on tables/views across public database links. Private database links are not supported. The file upload feature is not supported across database links. It is also not supported in forms that are based upon stored procedures. A form cannot be based on a view that has any of the following: the DISTINCT operator aggregate functions like AVG, COUNT, MAX, or MIN GROUP BY, HAVING, START WITH, or CONNECT BY clauses See also: For more information on updatable views, refer to the Oracle8i documentation.

Recent objects portlet

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.

Charts

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

Center alignment of tabs within a page region is not supported for this release.

National Language Support

To correctly view the bidirectional flipped (mirrored) images, change the directory to $ORACLE_HOME/portal30/admin/plsql/nlsres. Start SQL*Plus and connect with your Portal schema userid and password. Run the imginst.sql script. For example: C:\> cd oracle\portal30\admin\plsql\nlsres C:\> sqlplus portal_schema/portal_password@connect_string sqlplus> @imginst.sql The character set that you use on your middle tier should be identical to the character set of your database. If you are using the UTF8 character set for your database, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your browser. If you are using Oracle Portal to develop forms against a multibyte character set database with multibyte object names, it is recommended that you use Netscape Navigator as your browser. If the language you are using for Oracle Portal is a different language from the one of your content, then you will experience problems performing a basic search, i.e., items matching the search criteria will not be found. This can be particularly problematic if you have multi-lingual content. The Oracle Portal Welcome page is currently appearing in English only. Following is a list of known bugs with the National Language Support in Oracle Portal: Bug Number Bug Subject and Description 1775431 NO HELP IMAGES WERE TRANSLATED Images displayed in online help will appear in English. It is a known problem. 1765894 THE FONT SIZE OF A STMT IS NOT SAME (LARGE PARTLY) IN WELCOME PAGE The font size of some text displayed in the Welcome page may be larger than other text. This is because the text is displayed from various sources including online web pages. It is a known problem. 1764715 UNTRANSLATED TEXT IN ORACLE REPORTS SECURITY - ALL LANGUAGES Some text in the Reports Security page appears in English: Create Reports Server Access: pages 1 Create Reports Definition File Access: pages 1, 2, and 4 Create Reports Printer Access: pages 1 and 2 Create Reports Simple Calendar Access: pages 2 1764683 DATE FORMAT IS INCORRECT (CZECH) From the Administer tab, select Oracle Reports Security Settings link. Under Reports Calendar Access, select Create Reports Simple Calendar Access. Navigate to page 2. The date format is wrong, should be dd mm yyyy. The time format is also wrong, should be 24 hour, not AM/PM. The next step returns an error, ORA-01858: a non-numeric character was found where a numeric was expected 1764585 ORACLE REPORTS SECURITY HEADING IS UNTRANSLATED - ALL LANGUAGES The title of the Oracle Reports Security page is untranslated. 1756447 NO LANGUAGE SELECTED FONT TO CHOOSE IN PAGE STYLE During the creation of a new Page Style, one can select the font for various strings such as Banner Title. Fonts applicable to the Portal language setting may not appear. Only English fonts may appear. 1754689 UNTRANSLATED TEXT IN ADD GATEWAY... FOR PORTAL 3X On the Administer tab under Services, click on Listener Gateway Settings. Click on Gateway Database Access Descriptor Settings (2nd link). Click on Add for Oracle 3X Portal configuration. On the resulting dialog the text in the Add Database Access Descriptor section is not translated. There are also untranslated DDL's on this page. This occurs for all languages. It also occurs for all links off of the Gateway Database Access Descriptor Settings. 1754647 EXPORT MBCS FUNCTION TO SQL FILE. THE MBCS CAN' T DISPLAY CORRECTLY. Click the Database Object tab in the Navigator. Create a user with MBCS (Traditional Chinese) characters in the name. Create a function belonging to this MBCS user. After the function is created successfully, export the function to a SQL file and save it to the local disk drive. Use Notepad to open this file. The username does not display correctly in Traditional Chinese. This problem is known to occur with Traditional Chinese using Netscape 4.7, Traditional Chinese Windows NT 4.0 with SP5, UTF8 database. 1754415 TOOLTIP FOR TRADITONAL CHINESE DISPLAYS GARBAGE. Using Traditional Chinese as the Portal language, tooltips appear as garbage. It is known to occur on a Windows NT 4.0 SP5 Traditional Chinese workstation using Netscape 4.7. 1753031 UNTRANSLATED TEXT IN NUMEROUS WIZARDS (NAV - >APPLICATIONS) Several wizards accessed from the Navigator Applications page have untranslated text: Dynamic Page Wizard (pages 2, 3, and 4) has English text appearing. XML Component Wizard (pages 1 through 7) has untranslated descriptive text. Menu Wizard (page 2) has corrupt characters (My Menu icon) on the left side of the page. All drop-down menus are in English. URL Wizard (pages 2, 3, 4, and 5) has descriptive text in English. 1753022 UNTRANSLATED TEXT IN NUMEROUS WIZARDS (NAV ->DATABASE OBJECTS) Several wizards accessed from the Navigator Database Objects page have untranslated text: Table Wizard (page 2) has untranslated text in the list of values drop-down menu. View Wizard (initial page) has untranslated descriptive text. Synonym Wizard (page 1) has descriptive text in English. Java Object Wizard has descriptive text in English. Database Link Wizard has descriptive text in English. Index Wizard (pages 2, 3, and 4) have descriptive text and drop down menus in English. 1753022 "ADD TO FAVORITES" NOT SHOW AS TRANSLATED STRING This problem is known to occur if Thai is selected as the language. Select any application from the Navigator Applications tab. Select a component of the application. The option Add to Favorites appears in English. 1752532 ORA-01858(WWV-11230) ERROR WHEN CLICKING A LINK IN 'QUESTIONS ANSWERED' This problem is known to occur when Korean or Japanese are selected. Select the Monitor tab from the Portal Home Page. Under Questions Answered, select What Objects Have Been Deleted? The following error occurs: Error: ORA-01858: a non-numeric character was found where a numeric was expected (WWV-11230). 1750726 NO BUTTONS & CONTENTS IN SCREEN WHEN SELECTING ADD DEFAULT(BLANK CONF.) This problem is known to occur when the Thai language is selected. Select the Administer tab. Select Listener Gateway Settings under Services Portlet. Click Gateway Database Access Descriptor Settings link. Click Add Default (blank configuration) link. The screen displays Database Access Descriptor with no contents and no buttons. 1750663 UNEXPECTED STRINGS WHEN EDIT DAD WITH LANGUAGE SETTING = THAI. This problem is known to occur when the Thai language is selected. Select the Administer tab. Select Listener Gateway Settings under Services Portlet. Click Gateway Database Access Descriptor Settings link. Click any Edit icon under Edit/Delete Database Access Descriptors. The screen displays Database Access Descriptor with Edit DAD Entry and the contents. Unexpected strings display, such as: Edit DAT Entry Create DAD Entry #mode_string_add_end#--> Maximum number of characters allowed is 64.#mode_string_add_end#--> 1748506 THAI TRANSLATED STRING IS CHANGED AUTOMATICALLY TO ENGLISH STRING This problem is known to occur when the Thai language is selected. While adding portlets to a new page, the word Favorites will appear under Personal Content for the portlets available to be added. In this case, the word is translated into Thai. When the portlet is actually added by selecting OK, the word Favorites reverts to English. When one attempts to add a portlet again, the word is still in English. 1748479 THAI CHARACTERS IS DISPLAYED INCORRECTLY WHEN ASSIGNED THAI CHAR. WITH TAB This problem is known to occur when the Thai language is selected. Create a new page and add a new tab to it, then edit the tab and put in Thai characters in the display name. If Advanced Options is selected before the Apply button is pressed, the entered name does not display correctly. If Apply and Close are selected but the Advanced Options tab is not selected, the characters display correctly. 1651092 CANNOT DISPLAY ASAHI.COM VIA URL ITEMS This bug is known to occur when Japanese language is selected. URL items do not display correctly in a content area. 1629674 CAN NOT DISPLAY ASAHI.COM VIA URL APPLICATIONS This bug is known to occur when Japanese language is selected. URL applications do not display correctly. 1629674 CAN NOT DISPLAY ASAHI.COM VIA URL APPLICATIONS This bug is known to occur when Japanese language is selected. One cannot search items in the Content Area using interMedia Text 8.1.7 when character set is JA16EUC. It does not return a correct result if you search for Japanese words using the '$' stem operator of interMedia Text 8.1.7 (due to bug number 1236170). Oracle Portal always puts '$' in front of the search terms, which does not make sense for a Japanese environment. This is a known bug in interMedia Text which manifests in Portal.

Navigator portlets

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.

Oracle Portal Community portlets

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: After Portal Installation, login as the Portal administrator. Click on the Administer Tab. Click on Global Settings. Enter your site's proxy settings in the fields for: Proxy Host, e.g., www-proxy.us.oracle.com (enter the proxy server that your company uses instead) Proxy Port, e.g., 80 Click OK. 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: From the Navigator, edit the Oracle Portal Home Page. Make sure that you have Customize set for Others. Click on the Edit Defaults link of the Developer News portlet. Make sure that the Network Access is On. Click OK. Click Close. Refresh the page. From the Navigator, edit the Welcome page. Make sure you have Customize set for Others. Click on the Edit Defaults link of the Product News portlet. Make sure that the Network Access is On. Click OK. Click Close. Refresh the page. Log out of the Portal. Re-login as any Portal user. 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.

Publishing pages as portlets

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.

Page templates

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.

Portlet repository

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. From the Navigator, go to the Content Areas tab and click the Portlet Repository content area from the list of content areas. From the Portlet Repository content area, click Edit Folder in the upper right corner. Click Administration. Click Content Area. Click the Objects tab. Under Categories, ensure that General appears in the list of Visible Categories. If it does not appear there, select it from the Hidden Categories list and click the right arrow button. Click OK. Click Navigate Content Area. Click the Portlet Repository content area from the list of content areas. From the Portlet Repository content area, click Edit Folder in the upper right corner. Click the Edit icon next to the Seeded Providers folder. Go to the Required tab and choose General from the Category list. Click OK. Repeat steps 10 through 12 for the Other Providers folder.

Changes to portlet record

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. The call_get_portlet field allows the provider to indicate if the portal can use the metadata stored in the Portlet Repository instead of contacting the provider for the data. If the portlet metadata (specified by provider id, portlet id, and language) returned by a provider does not change, then the provider should set the value for call_get_portlet to false. This tells the portal to use the repository in place of calls to the provider's get_portlet and get_portlet_list. The default for this flag is true. The call_is_runnable field allows the provider to indicate if the portal has to make calls to the provider's is_portlet_runnable function for the portlet. The provider's is_portlet_runnable function is called prior to displaying a portlet in the Portlet Repository. For public portlets, this function will always return true so there is no need to contact the provider. In these cases, the provider should set the value for call_is_runnable to false. The portal then assumes that the portlet is always runnable. The default for this flag is true. The has_show_link_mode field enables the portlet to implement a Menu Link Label show mode method. If the value is false then the portal will use the portlet title as the Menu Link Label. The accept_content_type field is a comma delimited list of content_types whose values are the types of content that the portlet produces, e.g., if a portlet can produce HTML, and Mobile XML, the string would be text/html,ext/vnd.oracle.mobilexml. For any new development, the existing content_type field in the portlet_record should not be used. This field is now obsolete and is being superseded by accept_content_type.

Back to top