Federated Portals Guide

Publishing to UDDI Registries

WebLogic Portal provides tools for searching UDDI registries for producers, portlets, books, and pages. In addition, WebLogic Portal allows you to publish portlets, books, and pages to UDDI registries.

This chapter explains how to publish portlets, books, and pages, and the producers in which they are deployed, to UDDI registries. This chapter also discusses an API for performing UDDI searches programatically.

This chapter includes the following sections:

What is UDDI?

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) is a standard mechanism for describing and locating web services across the internet. Web services, such as WSRP producers, are typically published to a UDDI registry with associated metadata. Users can search UDDI registries using keywords to locate producers and the portlets and other services they offer.

As Figure 9-1 illustrates, metadata from producers, including metadata for portlets, books, and pages, is published to a UDDI registry. Using keywords, consumers can search UDDI registries to locate these services and consume them.

Using UDDI with WebLogic Portal

If you want to publish a producer and its resources to a UDDI registry, you need to configure the producer. Similarly, if you want to be able to search UDDI registries from a WebLogic Portal consumer application, you need to configure the consumer so that it can locate and use the UDDI registries.

This section summarizes the main tasks you need to perform to use UDDI registries with WebLogic Portal:

Configure the Producer

WebLogic Portal applications are not automatically published to UDDI registries. You need to configure the application to publish its resources. The section Configuring the Producer explains how to configure a producer so that the producer and its resources (books, pages, and portlets) appear in one or more UDDI registries.

Configure the Consumer

When a consumer is properly configured, you can search UDDI registries for producers and their resources both programmatically and interactively using the WebLogic Portal Administration Console. The section Configuring the Consumer explains how to configure a consumer so that it can locate and search specific UDDI registries.

Perform Searches

If you are interested in performing programmatic UDDI registry searches from a consumer, see Searching for Producers Programatically. If you are interested in the tools provided for searching UDDI registries in the Administration Console, see Adding Remote Resources to the Library.

Configuring the Producer

This section explains how to publish producers and their resources, such as portlets, pages, and books, to a UDDI registry. To do this, you need to configure the producer properly.

This section includes the following topics:

What Information is Published?

All portlets, books, and pages with the offerRemote property set to true are automatically published in the properly configured UDDI registry or registries. For information on setting the offerRemote property, see Enabling and Disabling UDDI for a Producer.

Table 9-1 lists the specific types of information that are published to the UDDI registry for each published component.

Editing the Configuration File

The first step in publishing a producer and its resources is to edit the configuration file wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml. To edit the file, you must first copy it to your web project. To do this, select the Merged Projects view, navigate to the WEB-INF folder of the producer web application, right-click wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml, and select Copy To Project. This makes the file available for editing in your project’s WEB-INF folder.

This file is used to publish a producer and its resources, such as portlets, to specified UDDI registries. An example configuration file is shown in Listing 9-1. Each of the configuration file’s elements are listed and defined in Table 9-2. When editing the configuration file, be sure to complete all of the required elements, as listed in the table.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config xmlns="http://www.bea.com/ns/portal/90/wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config">

    <description>Description goes here</description>

    <!-- Set this to false to prevent this producer from publishing portlets. -->
    <enabled>true</enabled>

    <publish-url>http://localhost:7001/uddi/uddilistener</publish-url>
    <inquiry-url>http://localhost:7001/uddi/uddilistener</inquiry-url>

    <!--credential-alias>registryPublisherComplexProducer</credential-alias-->
    <username>weblogic</username>
    <password>weblogic</password>
    
    <producer-business-entity>
        <name>Sample Producer</name>
        <description>This is a producer business entity</description>
        <discovery-url>http://localhost:7001/portal_2/index.jsp</discovery-url>
    </producer-business-entity>

    <producer-service>
        <name>Sample Producer</name>
        <description>This producer hosts test portlets for portal_2</description>
        <wsdl-url>http://localhost:7001/portal_2/producer?WSDL</wsdl-url>
        <keyword>skiing</keyword>
        <keyword>hiking</keyword>
        <keyword>camping</keyword>
        <keyword>cycling</keyword>
    </producer-service>
</wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config>

Table 9-2 describes the configuration file’s elements.

Configuring Third-Party Registries

To configure a WebLogic Portal application to use a third-party UDDI registry, you need to:

Specifying Access Credentials

Some registries may offer both publish and inquiry services at the same URL, while some others use separate URLs for these two services. Consult the specific registry documentation to find out the actual URLs.

Depending on how the registry enforces access control, you may also need to enter either a set of credentials or an alias to a credential. The credentials must allow sufficient permission to access all UDDI publish operations. Again, consult the registry's documentation to find out the access control policies.

You can set access credentials in the wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml or using the WebLogic Portal Administration Console.

For information on the configuration file, see Configuring the Producer. For information on setting credentials through the Administration Console, see Modifying the Producer Portlet Registry.

Creating tModels for Third-Party Registries

Services stored in UDDI registries are categorized and identified by their taxonomies. Basically, a taxonomy, also called a tModel, is a name/key mapping.

For the purpose of publishing them to UDDI registries, producers, portlets, books, and pages all have taxonomies, which are defined in XML files. Default taxonomies are provided to describe producers, portlets, books, and pages for WebLogic Server’s internal UDDI registry. If you want to use a third party registry, log in to that registry and create a tModel for each taxonomy found in the internal WebLogic UDDI registry. Consult the documentation provided for the third-party registry for information on how to create taxonomies for that particular registry.

The internal WebLogic UDDI tModel files are located in:

<WLP_HOME>/lib/wsrp/tModels

where <WLP_HOME> is the root directory for your WebLogic Portal installation.

Pre-Configuring the Business Entity

If you pre-configure a business entity directly in the UDDI registry, you can then associate that entity with a producer using only the name of the business entity. For example, Listing 9-2 shows a <producer-business-entity> element that identifies a pre-configured business entity. In this case, the entity with the name “My Portlet Producer” was pre-configured in the UDDI registry. In this example, the <description> and <discovery-url> elements are not necessary.

For information on configuring <producer-business-entity> and <producer-service> entities for a given UDDI registry, consult the documentation for that registry. Typically, you can also use the JAXR API to programmatically create business entities.

<producer-business-entity>
    <name>My Portlet Producer</name>
</producer-business-entity>

If you pre-configure a business entity, WebLogic Portal requires only the name of the business entity to use it (as shown in Listing 9-2). Multiple producer web applications can use the same business entity by using this same name. If you want different producer web applications to use their own unique business entity, use unique names for your business entities.

Auto-Configuring the Business Entity

WebLogic Portal can automatically create a business entity if you supply the <discovery-url> element in the wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml file. For example, the wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml file configuration shown in Listing 9-3 allows the business entity to be created automatically.

<producer-business-entity>
    <name>My Portlet Producer</name>
    <description>This is my business entity</description>
    <discovery-url>http://somehost:port/path</discovery-url>
</producer-business-entity>

When you deploy the web application, the producer first checks the registry to see if a business entity with the specified name exists. If not, WebLogic Portal creates a new business entity with the given <name>, <description>, and <discover-url>.

Specifying Metadata for Searches

By adding metadata, such as keywords, to producers, portlets, pages and books, you will improve the ability of consumers to find those resources in a search. This section discusses how to add searchable metadata for portlets, books, and pages. For information on adding publishing producer metadata, see Adding Producer Metadata.

Adding Producer Metadata

UDDI searches can locate producers using metadata that has been added to the wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml file described previously. Both the <name> and <description> elements of the <producer-service> element are searchable. In addition, you can use the <keyword> element of the <producer-service> element to add metadata, as shown in Listing 9-4.

<producer-service>
     <name>Colorado Producer</name>
     <description>
          This producer offers portlets related to Colorado. 
     </description>
     <wsdl-url>http://colorado/producer?wsdl</wsdl-url>
     <keyword>skiing</keyword>
     <keyword>hiking</keyword>
     <keyword>camping</keyword>
</producer-service>

Adding Portlet Metadata

UDDI searches can locate portlets by their title and description. When you create a portlet, you are required to give it a title, and, optionally, you can enter a description. The text of these two fields is available to UDDI searches. In addition to these tags, you can use the <netuix:meta> tag to provide searchable metadata. To do this, add a meta tag and specify name and content attributes. Listing 9-5 shows a sample portlet file with a meta tag that specifies a named item (activities) with several content attirubtes (hiking, camping, fishing). The separator attribute simply specifies a character to separate multiple content values.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<portal:root
xmlns:netuix="http://www.bea.com/servers/netuix/xsd/controls/netuix/1.0.0"
xmlns:portal="http://www.bea.com/servers/netuix/xsd/portal/support/1.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.bea.com/servers/netuix/xsd/portal/support/
1.0.0 portal-support-1_0_0.xsd">
<netuix:portlet definitionLabel="index_1" title="Activities">
    <netuix:meta name="activities" content="hiking;camping;fishing"         separator=";"/>
<netuix:titlebar>
    <netuix:maximize/>
            <netuix:minimize/>
        </netuix:titlebar>
<netuix:content>
<netuix:jspContent contentUri="/activities.jsp"/>
</netuix:content>
</netuix:portlet>
</portal:root>

Adding Book and Page Metadata

UDDI searches can locate specific books and pages by their title. When you create a book or page, you are required to give it a title. This title is available to UDDI searches. Just as with portlets, you can embed the <netuix:meta> tag in .book and .page files to add searchable metadata keywords. See Listing 9-5 for an example.

By default, the <enabled> element of this file is set to false. You must set it to true to publish the producer.

Enabling and Disabling UDDI for a Producer

You can enable or disable UDDI searching for an entire producer web application or for specific portlets, books, and pages.

Enabling and Disabling a Producer Web Application for UDDI Searches

You can disable UDDI publishing for an entire web application by setting the <enabled> element in the wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml file to false. If this element is false, then none of the portlets, pages, or books in the web application will be accessible to UDDI queries. If the element is true, then all portlets, pages, and books in the web application are published, unless individually disabled using with the offerRemote property.

The wsrp-producer-portlet-registry-config.xml file is located in the /WEB-INF directory of each web application in a producer. (To edit this file, you must first copy it from the J2EE Shared Library in which it is stored into your project.)

Enabling and Disabling Individual Producer Resources for UDDI Searches

The offerRemote property can be set to true or false for any portal resource (portlets, pages, and books) that can be remote. If true, then the resource is offered as remote, and it can be discovered and consumed remotely by a consumer. If false, then the resource is hidden from view from consumers. You can set this property from the Properties view for a portlet, book, or page, as shown in Figure 9-2.

Configuring the Consumer

In order to use the search tools, either through the API or the WebLogic Portal Administration Console, you must set up the wsrp-consumer-portlet-registry-config.xml for the consumer. This file defines the UDDI registry information, such as UDDI inquiry URL, number of rows to return, and description. A consumer may need to search more than one registry and all registries must be defined in this file.

Listing 9-6 shows an example configuration file. After you configure the consumer, you must restart the application.

<wsrp-consumer-portlet-registry-config
    xmlns="http://www.bea.com/ns/portal/90/wsrp-consumer-portlet-registry-config">
     <description>WLP Tools WSRP Registry Configuration</description>
     <registry>
         <name>defaultRegistry</name>
         <title>Default Registry</title>
         <description>This is the default registry.</description>
         <default>true</default>
         <inquiry-url>http://localhost:7001/uddi/uddilistener</inquiry-url>
         <max-results>500</max-results>
     </registry>
     <registry>
         <name>SecondRegistry</name>
         <title>Second Registry</title>
         <description>Another registry.</description>
         <default>false</default>
         <inquiry-url>http://localhost:8080/uddi/inquiry</inquiry-url>
         <max-results>500</max-results>
     </registry>
</wsrp-consumer-portlet-registry-config>

Searching for Producers Programatically

WebLogic Portal provides two ways to search for producers. If you are working in the staging or production environments, you can use the WebLogic Portal Administration Console to search for producers. WebLogic Portal also exposes an API that lets you search programmatically. You might use the API if you wanted to write your own search tool.

For information on searching for producers in the Administration Console, see Adding Remote Resources to the Library.

The rest of this section discusses how to use the API to search for producers. This section includes the following parts:

The UDDI Query API

WebLogic Portal provides an API that you can use to search UDDI registries for producers, portlets, pages, and books. Typically, this API is used for the development of custom search tools.

The following packages contain the API that you can use to search UDDI registries for producers, portlets, pages, and books:

The following tables summarize the classes in these three packages. Please refer to the Javadoc for detailed information on these classes.

Sample Code

The code fragment in Listing 9-7 shows how the API can be used to search for and discover portlets and producers in a UDDI registry.

import com.bea.wsrp.registry.entries.*;
import com.bea.wsrp.registry.*;
import com.bea.wsrp.registry.find.*;

public class UDDIQuery {

    
    public void doQuery() {
    
        ConnectInfo ci = RegistryFinder.getDefault();
        FindRequest fr = new FindRequest();
        fr.addName("Hello");
        fr.addKeyword("hello");
        fr.addKeyword("world");
    
        List<PortletEntry> portlets = registryFinder.findPortlets(fr, connectInfo);

        //-- User selects a portlet from the list.

        Key producerKey = portletEntry.getProducerKey();
        fr = new FindRequest();
        fr.setProducerServiceKey(producerKey);
        List<ProducerEntry> producers = registryFinder.findProducers(fr, connectInfo);

        //-- User selects a producer from the list.
    
        }
    }