Overview of Personalization Development

 

WebLogic Personalization Server provides developers with the ability to create personalized applications for e-commerce Web sites. This topic provides a broad overview of personalization development for Java and JSP developers.

This topic includes the following sections:

• Personalization Server Run-Time Architecture

  • Advisor

  • User Management

  • Content Management

  • Rules Management

  • Foundation Classes and Utilities

• JSP Tags

• Integration of External Components

• Support for Native Types

 

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Personalization Server Run-Time Architecture

The WebLogic Personalization Server run-time architecture is designed to support a variety of personalized applications. These applications can be built on the portal/portlet infrastructure, on the tags and EJBs supplied by the Advisor, and on select tags and EJBs supplied by other personalization server components.

The following high-level architecture picture may be used to visualize the relationships between the components.

Figure 1-1 WebLogic Personalization Server High Level Architecture

 

The personalized application is one built by the developer to use the personalization components. It may consist of a set of traditional JSP pages or servlets and/or code that accesses EJB objects directly.

Advisor

The Advisor component is the primary interface to the most common operations that personalized applications will use. It provides access through tags or a single EJB session bean. Specific functionality provided by the Advisor includes classifying users, selecting content based on user properties, and querying content management directly. The Advisor uses the Foundation, User Management, Rules Service, and Content Management components.

User Management

The User Management component supports the run-time access of users, groups, and the relationships between them. The notion of property sets is used by the user and group property access scheme. This component is set up using the User Management Administration tools and supports access via JSP tags or direct access to EJB objects. A Unified User Profile may be built by the developer, extending the base user profile, to provide custom data source access to user property values.

Content Management

The Content Management component provides the run-time API by which content is queried and retrieved. The functionality of this component is accessible via tags. The content retrieval functionality is provided using either the provided reference implementation or third-party content retrieval products.

Rules Management

The Rules Management component is the run-time service that runs the rules that are built in the E-Business Control Center.

Foundation Classes and Utilities

The Foundation is a set of miscellaneous utilities to aid JSP and Java developers in the development of personalized applications using the WebLogic Personalization Server. Its utilities include JSP files and Java classes that can be used by JSP developers to gain access to functions provided by the server and helpers for gaining access to Advisor services.

 

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JSP Tags

The JSP tags included with WebLogic Personalization Server (Table 1-1) allow developers to create personalized applications without having to program using Java.

Table 1-1 JavaServer Page JSP Tags Overview

Library	Tag	Description
Ads	<ad:adTarget>	Queries the content management system and displays ads.
Content Management	<cm:getProperty>	Retrieves the value of the specified content metadata property.
	<cm:printDoc>	Inlines the raw bytes of a document object into the JSP output stream.
	<cm:printProperty>	Inlines the value of the specified content metadata property as a string.
	<cm:select>	Selects content based on a search expression query syntax.
	<cm:selectById>	Retrieves content using the content's unique identifier.
Internationalization	<i18n:localize>	Defines the language, country, variant, and base bundle name to be used throughout a page when accessing resource bundles via the <i18n:getmessage> tag. Also allows a character encoding and content type to be specified for a JSP.
	<i18n:getMessage>	Used in conjunction with the <i18:localize> tag to retrieve localized static text or messages.
Personalization	<pz:contentQuery>	Provides content based on search expression query syntax.
	<pz:contentSelector>	Provides content based on results of a content selector rule and subsequent content query.
	<pz:div>	Turns a user-provided piece of content on or off based on the results of a classifier rule.
Placeholders	<ph:placeholder>	Implements a placeholder, which describes the behavior for a location on a JSP page.
Property Sets	<ps:getPropertyNames>	Used to get a list of property names given a property set.
	<ps:getPropertySetNames>	Used to get a list of property sets given a property set type.
	<ps: getRestrictedPropertyValues>	Used to get a list of restricted property values given a property set type and property name.
User Management (Profile)	<um:getProfile>	Retrieves the Unified User Profile object.
	<um:getProperty>	Gets the value for the specified property from the current user profile in the session.
	<um:getPropertyAsString>	Works exactly like the <um:getProperty> tag above, but ensures that the retrieved property value is a String.
	<um:removeProperty>	Removes the property from the current user profile in the session.
	<um:setProperty>	Sets a new value for the specified property for the current user profile in the session.
(Group-User Management)	<um:addGroupToGroup>	Adds the group corresponding to the provided childGroupName to the group corresponding to the provided parentGroupName.
	<um:addUserToGroup>	Adds the user corresponding to the provided userName to the group corresponding to the provided parentGroupName.
	<um:createGroup>	Creates a new group in the realm, and a corresponding group profile in the personalization database.
	<um:createUser>	Creates a new persisted User object with the specified username and password.
	<um:getChildGroupNames>	Returns the names of any groups that are children of the given group.
	<um:getGroupNamesForUser>	Retrieves a String array that contains the group names matching the provided search expression and corresponding to groups to which the provided user belongs.
	<um:getParentGroupName>	Retrieves the name of the parent of the group associated with the provided groupName. The information is taken from the realm.
	<um:getTopLevelGroups>	Retrieves an array of group names, each of which has no parent group. The information is taken from the realm.
	<um:getUsernames>	Retrieves a String array that contains the usernames matching the provided search expression.
	<um:getUsernamesForGroup>	Retrieves a String array that contains the usernames matching the provided search expression and correspond to members of the provided group.
	<um:removeGroup>	Removes the group corresponding to the provided groupName.
	<um:removeGroupFromGroup>	Removes a child group from a parent group.
	<um:removeUser>	Removes the user corresponding to the provided username. It can remove any type of extended user that has its profileType set in the database.
	<um:removeUserFromGroup>	Removes a user from a group.
(Security)	<um:login>	Authenticates a user/password combination.
	<um:logout>	Ends the current user's WebLogic Server session. This tag should be used in combination with the <um:login> tag.
	<um:setPassword>	Updates the password for the user corresponding to the provided username.
Personalization Utilities	<es:convertSpecialChars>	Converts characters which would normally signify special meaning to an HTML browser into characters which can be displayed as intended.
	<es:counter>	Creates a for loop construct.
	<es:date>	Gets a date and time formatted string based on the user's time zone preference.
	<es:forEachInArray>	Iterates over an array.
	<es:isNull>	Checks to see if a value is null. If the value type is a String, also checks to see if the String is empty.
	<es:notNull>	Checks to see if a value is not null. If the value type is a String, also checks to see if the String is not empty.
	<es:transposeArray>	Transposes a standard [row][column] array to a [column][row] array.
	<es:uriContent>	Pulls content from a URL.
WebLogic Utilities	<wl:cache>	Specifies that its contents do not necessarily need to be updated every time it is displayed.
	<wl:process>	Provides a attribute-based flow control construct.
	<wl:repeat>	Used to iterate over a variety of Java objects, as specified in the set attribute.

 
 

 

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Integration of External Components

A range of external components either come already integrated into the WebLogic Personalization Server, or can be integrated easily by a developer as extensions to the core components. A specific set of components that are known to be widely useful are described in Table 1-2. Other custom component integrations are possible given the JSP and EJB basis for the WebLogic Personalization Server, but the entire range of possibilities is not addressed here.

Table 1-2 Useful External Components the Personalization Server

External Component	Out-of-the-Box Support	Methods and Notes
DBMS	Integrated and tested with Cloudscape, Oracle 8.1.6, and 8.1.7.	Uses standard WebLogic Server JDBC connection pools.
LDAP authentication	Can be set up automatically using administration tools and property files.	Uses WebLogic Server security realms.
LDAP retrieval of user and group information	Can be set up automatically using administration tools.	Built into EJB persistence for User entity bean.
Legacy database of users	None.	Requires Unified User Profile extension of User entity bean.
Content Management engine	Reference implementation provided.	Provides API/SPI support from third-party vendors.
Legacy content database	None.	Requires either extension of Document entity bean or custom implementation of content management SPI.

 

 

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Support for Native Types

WebLogic Personalization Server supports the native types shown in Table 1-3.

Table 1-3 Native Types

Supported Type	Java Class	Notes
Boolean	java.lang.Boolean	Comparators: ==, !=
Integer	java.lang.Number	Comparators: ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=
Float	java.lang.Double	Comparators: ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=
Text	java.lang.String	Comparators: ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=, like
Datetime	java.sql.Timestamp	Comparators: ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=
UserDefined	Defined by developer	Comparators: N/A User-defined properties may be programmatically set and gotten, but are not supported in the tools, rules, or content query expressions.

 

Any property can be a multi-value of a specific single native type as well. This is implemented as a java.util.Collection. Comparators for multi-values are contains and containsall, although the rules development tool will only allow the use of contains. The values possible as part of a multi-value may be restricted to a valid set, using the Property Set management tools.