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Oracle® Application Server Portal Configuration Guide
10g Release 2 (10.1.4) B19305-03 |
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Oracle® Application Server Portal Configuration Guide
10g Release 2 (10.1.4) B19305-03 |
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This chapter provides a brief description of new features introduced with the latest releases of Oracle Application Server Portal and provides pointers to additional information.
The new features of OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.4) include:
New Caching Architecture
In 10g Release 2 (10.1.4), OracleAS Portal introduces a major improvement in scaleability. In this release, OracleAS Web Cache, using Edge Side Includes (ESI) processing, is the entry point for page request processing rather than the Parallel Page Engine (PPE). This simplifies the page metadata (PMD) and it allows different types of metadata to be cached in OracleAS Web Cache at a more granular level, increasing the cache hit ratio and enabling a more granular invalidation of portal content. This new approach also provides support for secure full page caching in OracleAS Web Cache.
Query Path URL Supports SSL
OracleAS Portal maintains the URL prefix of OracleAS Single Sign-On, which accesses certain information through calls from the database using the UTL_HTTP package. These calls can now also be made using HTTPS. In previous releases, these calls were made using HTTP. As a result, even if OracleAS Portal and OracleAS Single Sign-On were configured to use HTTPS, you had to still use an HTTP port on OracleAS Single Sign-On to support these interfaces. If you are using HTTPS, then after configuring OracleAS Single Sign-On to use SSL, you must update the OracleAS Single Sign-On query path URL. See "Updating Wallet Path and Password in iasconfig.xml (HTTPS)" for information about the tasks to be performed.
New URL Format
The URL format in OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.4) has changed from http://<host>:<port>/pls/<dad> to http://<host>:<port>/portal/pls/<dad>. This change is to accommodate the availability of all necessary Portal Services running within OC4J_Portal. If URLs of the older format are accessed, then OracleAS Portal either automatically rewrites the URL to use the new format, or alerts you to change the bookmarked URL to the new format.
Organizations engaged in enterprise portal projects have found application integration to be a major issue. Until now, users developed portlets using proprietary APIs for a single portal platform and often faced a shortage of available portlets from a particular portal vendor. All this changes with the introduction of Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP). WSRP is a Web services standard that allows the plug-and-play of visual, user-facing Web services with portals or other intermediary Web applications. Being a standard, WSRP enables interoperability between a standards-enabled container and any WSRP portal.
Search and Oracle Text Indexing Enhancements
Notable improvements to the search facilities in OracleAS Portal include:
Search Indexes Synchronize Automatically On Commit
If you are using Oracle Database 10g, you can now specify that Oracle Text indexes synchronize automatically whenever portal objects are added, modified, or deleted. This feature is useful for portal applications where newly added or altered content must be searchable immediately.
To find out more, see Section 8.3.5.1, "Synchronizing Oracle Text Indexes". This feature is not available on databases earlier than Oracle Database 10g
Improvements to Document and URL Filtering
Oracle Text uses the AUTO_FILTER to convert documents and URL content into a plain text format that is suitable for indexing. Filtering content unnecessarily can impact the speed and efficiency of portal searches, so in this release OracleAS Portal introduces two special attributes for file- and URL- based item types: MIME Type and Character Set. These attributes enable portal users to classify portal content correctly when it is uploaded to the portal and this streamlines the filter process.
For more information, see Section 8.3.3.7, "Maximizing AUTO_FILTER Performance".
Support for Enhanced Provider Message Authentication
In 10g Release 2 (10.1.4), OracleAS Portal introduces the support for Enhanced Provider Message Authentication. Enhanced message authentication secures the integrity of the headers that are used to propagate the user's authenticated identity to the Web provider. This enables you to leverage J2EE security in your provider code.
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See Also:
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The new features of OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) include:
Configuring and Managing an Upgraded Oracle Application Server Portal Instance
Automation of SSL Configuration Using the SSLConfigTool Tool
Introduction of the Portal Services
The OracleAS Portal OC4J instance now provides all the Portal Services used to assemble portal pages, access portal and page metadata, and so on.
The Parallel Page Engine (PPE) continues to be one of the Portal Services that assembles portal pages. Other services, like those previously provided by mod_plsql, are now incorporated in the Portal Services as well. Starting with this release, OracleAS Portal no longer depends on mod_plsql, but all previous functionality is still seamlessly provided by the Portal Services.
Although OracleAS Portal no longer has a runtime dependency on mod_plsql, it still has a dependency on the mod_plsql configuration files. These files are used by Portal Services in order to process requests for portal the same way that mod_plsql does.
Support for Oracle Instant Portal
Oracle Instant Portal, originally shipped as part of Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One, is shipped with OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.2). Oracle Instant Portal is a custom application built with OracleAS Portal for smaller enterprises to build simple portals in a short time. See Oracle Instant Portal Getting Started for more information.
ptlasst Command Line Utility Removed
The ptlasst command line utility has been removed. All of the functionality that was provided by ptlasst is now available through the Portal Dependency Settings tool, ptlconfig, and file, iasconfig.xml. See Appendix A, "Using the Portal Dependency Settings Tool and File" for details on using ptlconfig and iasconfig.xml.
New ptllang Script to Install Languages
OracleAS Portal is configured with the languages that are selected in the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) during the Oracle Application Server middle-tier installation. To install languages, after you have installed OracleAS Portal, run ptllang.
In OracleAS Portal 10.1.2, the ptllang script completely replaces the ptlasst.csh -mode LANGUAGE. You must run ptllang for each language that you want OracleAS Portal to support. Refer to Section 4.9, "Configuring Language Support" for details.
Support for Global Inactivity Timeout in OracleAS Portal
A Global Inactivity Timeout can be configured for the OracleAS Single Sign-On (SSO) Server. This feature is now supported in OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.2). Refer to Section 6.1.6.1.3, "Support for Global Inactivity Timeout in OracleAS Portal" for details.
Support for User and Group LOVs in OracleAS Portal
User and Group LOVs work properly in OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) through the implementation of a new callback method. Oracle Delegated Administration Services posts the selected values to the callback method in OracleAS Portal's domain to avoid the cross-domain JavaScript issues. However, the releases of OracleAS Portal and Oracle Delegated Administration Services that you are using must support this callback method. 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) releases of both these components have this support. If OracleAS Portal 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) is used against an older release of Oracle Delegated Administration Services that does not support the callback method, then you must run the script secjsdom.sql, to set up a common domain. Refer to Section 6.1.6.2.5, "User and Group Lists of Values in OracleAS Portal" for details.
Configuring and Managing an Upgraded Oracle Application Server Portal Instance
A new appendix has been added that discusses how to configure a portal whose schema is not located in an OracleAS Metadata Repository, to take advantage of some of the new management services for Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3). Refer to Appendix B, " Configuring and Managing an Upgraded Oracle Application Server Portal Instance" for details.
Automation of SSL Configuration Using the SSLConfigTool Tool
The SSL Configuration Tool (SSLConfigTool) simplifies and automates SSL configuration for common Oracle Application Server and OracleAS Portal configurations. It is designed to automate many of the manual steps currently required for configuring SSL. Refer to Section 6.3.2.1, "Configuring SSL for OracleAS Portal" for details.
