Introducing the Avitek Financial Sample Portal

 

Welcome to the Tour of the Avitek Financial Sample Portal. The Avitek Financial Sample Portal is based on a fictitious Web site called Avitek Financial Services. Avitek Financial Services is a retail financial portal that provides a single point of access to several kinds of visitors, such as guests, investors, and financial advisors. Avitek Financial Services provides various kinds of business content, applications, and services from both internal and external sources. Additionally, the content is personalized for each type of visitor.

The Sample Portal contains several marketing campaigns, the ability to trade stock, and the ability author and review newsletters; it contains specific portlets for investors to access company profiles, service requests, and newsletters written by their financial advisors; plus it contains convenience portlets such as Dictionary, Bookmarks, Stock Quotes, And Web Search.

The Tour of the Avitek Financial Sample Portal shows you every portlet in the Sample Portal and demonstrates many possibilities in portlet design and content. This tour is not intended to demonstrate portal functionality. To familiarize yourself with portal functionality, please take the "Tour of the Stock Portal."

You can take the Tour of the Avitek Financial Sample Portal in the order it is presented or simply go to the portlet your interested in and follow the instructions. The password for all predefined visitors (visitor1-visitor10) is "password". This tour provides descriptions and instructions for accessing and using each Sample Portal portlet and provides information about underlying processes, the location of its Java and Java Server Pages (JS), and other pertinent information, such as whether a portlet is part of a marketing campaign.

This topic includes the following sections:

• Installing the Avitek Financial Sample Portal

• Release Notes

• Configuring the Avitek Financial Sample Portal for Oracle

• Starting the Tour

 

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Installing the Avitek Financial Sample Portal

This section describes how to install the Sample Portal.

Before you install the Sample Portal, make sure the following are installed:

• BEA WebLogic Server 6.1 Service Pack 2

• BEA WebLogic Portal Service Pack 2

Note: The Sample Portal application shown in this tour cannot be run if you have the WebLogic Personalization Server only license. However, there is a separate document for WebLogic Personalization Server users; see the "Personalization Examples."

To install the Sample Portal, complete the following steps:

1. Download the Sample Portal zip file from the BEA Developer Center at http://developer.bea.com/index.jsp.

2. Extract the sampleportal.zip files to PORTAL_HOME, where PORTAL_HOME is the directory in which you installed BEA WebLogic Portal Service Pack 1.

3. During extraction, replace any files that you are asked to overwrite.

4. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\config\sampleportalDomain directory.

5. Edit config.xml as follows:

   1. Replace all five instances of "@P13N_DIR_FORWARD_SLASH@" with the location of the WebLogic Portal directory (for example: C:bea/wlportal4.0).

      Note: Be sure to use forward slashes (/).

   2. Save and close config.xml.

6. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\applications\sampleportal\META-INF directory.

7. Edit application_config.xml as follows:

   1. Replace the two instances of "@BEA_WEBLOGIC_COMMERCE_SERVER_HOME@" with the location of the WebLogic Portal directory (for example: C:bea/wlportal4.0).

      Note: Be sure to use forward slashes (/).

   2. Save and close application_config.xml.

8. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\applications\sampleportal\db directory.

9. Run create_sampleportaldb.bat/sh. This creates the Cloudscape Sample Portal tables and data.

10. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\config\sampleportalDomain directory.

11. Run startSamplePortal.bat/sh. The Sample Portal starts.

12. When prompted, enter "weblogic" as the password.

13. After the Sample Portal starts, navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\bin\win32 or the PORTAL_HOME/bin/unix directory.

14. Run loadads.bat/sh. This script loads sample data to the database.

15. Run loaddocs.bat/sh. This script loads sample data to the database.

16. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\applications\sampleportal-project directory.

17. Run sync.bat/sh. This script updates WebLogic Portal with the Sample Portal application data.

This completes the installation of the Sample Portal. To view the Sample Portal go to Starting the Tour.

 

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Release Notes

The following list documents known bugs in the Sample Portal.

1. User Registration Zip Code field scrolls indefinitely (CR062333).

   The maximum length of ZIP Code field is specified as 11 characters. The field scrolls beyond the eleventh character position.

2. Email field allows does not conform to the [e-mail] format (CR062334).

   A user can enter an incomplete email address.

3. Load Test terminated early due to an exception (CR062867).

   Load test terminates with exception detected in native code when100 users perform the following: Log in; Navigate to the Web Portal page; maximize the Dictionary portlet; unmaximize the Dictionary portlet; minimize the Dictionary portlet; unminimize the Dictionary portlet; and then log out.

4. Quick Links Portlet shows incorrect for Customer Service user (CR063031).

   For visitor5, Quick Links Portlet displays "Your Role: Investor" when it should display "Your Role: Customer Service"

5. Javadoc needed for all Sample Portal code. (CR063035).

   The portlets in the Sample Portal are not properly documented in Javadocs.

6. The configjca.bat/sh does not display status confirmation (CR063242).

   When the configjca script runs, on both windows and UNIX, no confirmation or status is displayed to the user, so you don't know if the script ran correctly.

7. Exception thrown on Solaris when entering new user with non-English language and long ZIP Code string (CR065187).

   When a ZIP Code greater than 11 characters is entered and a language other than English is selected, an exception is thrown on Solaris but not on Windows.

8. Exception thrown on Solaris when changing default page or removing page through Visitor Tools (CR065475).

   When changing the default Home Page, exception is thrown to the console. However, the front end appears to work correctly.

 

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Configuring the Avitek Financial Sample Portal for Oracle

This topic describes how to configure the Sample Portal for use with Oracle databases.

Note: More information about configuring WebLogic Portal for Oracle databases is available in "Configuring WebLogic Portal for Oracle Databases" in the Deployment Guide.

1. With the Sample Portal running in Cloudscape, complete the following:

   1. Configure the WebLogic Portal JDBC connection pools for Oracle and update the settings for the RDBMS security realm, and as described in "Configure Properties and Environment Variables for Oracle" in the Deployment Guide.

   2. Configure the JDBC Helper Delegate as described in "Configure the JDBC Helper Service" in the Deployment Guide.

2. Stop the server.

3. Navigate to the BEA_HOME\PORTAL_HOME\bin\win32 or wlportal4.0/bin/unix directory, where PORTAL_HOME is the directory in which you installed BEA WebLogic Portal Service Pack 1.

4. Edit set-enviroment.bat/sh, as indicated in the following steps:

   1. Comment out Cloudscape database properties and uncomment Oracle database properties.

   2. Configure the server, user-id, and password properties to use the Oracle database.

      Note: For additional information, see "Update Environment Variables for the Server" in the Deployment Guide.

5. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\db directory.

6. In create_all.bat/sh, configure the server, user-id, and password to use the Oracle database.

7. Edit the databaseload.properties file, as follows:

   1. Comment out Cloudscape database properties and uncomment Oracle database properties.

   2. Edit the server, user-id, and password to use the Oracle database.

8. Run create_all.bat/sh. This will create your oracle database.

9. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\applications\sampleportal\db directory.

10. Edit the create_sampleportaldb.bat/s file as follows:

    1. Comment out the Cloudscape database properties and uncomment the Oracle database properties.

    2. Edit the server, user-id, and password to use the Oracle database.

11. Run create_sampleportaldb.bat/sh. This script creates three tables specific to the Sample Portal application.

12. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\config\sampleportalDomain directory.

13. Edit the configjca.bat file as follows:

    1. Comment out the Cloudscape database properties and uncomment the Oracle database properties.

    2. Edit the server, user-id, and password to use the Oracle database.

14. If you are running UNIX or you installed in a location other than C:\bea\wlportal4.0, modify the .ant.properties file in the PORTAL_HOME directory. Change the directory for p13n.dir so that it points to the correct directory. For example, the entry should look like the following:

    • Windows: p13n.dir=D:\\bea\\wlportal4.0

    • UNIX: p13n.dir=/home/bea/wlportal4.0

15. Run configjca.bat/sh. This script allows the Customer Service portlet to run against an Oracle database; other portlets are not affected.

16. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\config\sampleportalDomain directory.

17. Run startSamplePortal.bat/sh. The server starts.

18. When prompted, enter "weblogic" as the password for WebLogic Portal.

19. After the Sample Portal starts, navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\bin\win32 directory or the PORTAL_HOME/bin/unix directory.

20. Run loadads.bat/sh. This script loads sample data to the database.

21. Run loaddocs.bat/sh. This script loads sample data to the database.

22. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\applications\sampleportal-project directory.

23. Run sync.bat/sh. This script updates WebLogic Portal with the Sample Portal application data.

The Sample Portal is now configured for Oracle databases.

 

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Starting the Tour

Before you begin the Tour of the Avitek Financial Sample Portal, make sure the following are installed:

• WebLogic Server 6.1 Service Pack 2

• WebLogic Portal Service Pack 2

Note: You must start the WebLogic Portal in the Sample Portal domain.

1. Start the Sample Portal as follows:

   1. Navigate to the PORTAL_HOME\config\sampleportalDomain directory.

   2. Run startSamplePortal.bat/sh. The Sample Portal starts.

   3. Enter "weblogic" as password for WebLogic Portal.

      Startup is complete when the console window shows that the server is running in production mode.

      Note: When you start the WebLogic Portal for the first time, the startup process can take several minutes. Subsequent startups happen more quickly.

2. In a browser window, enter the following URL:

   http://localhost:7501/sampleportal/index.jsp

   where localhost is the name of the server running the Sample Portal.

   Note: The default port is 7501. For information on changing port numbers, see "Configure Listen Ports" in the Deployment Guide.