Oracle
Composer is an innovative component that enables any application or portal
to be customized or personalized after it has been deployed and is in use.
Oracle Composer is designed to be extremely easy to use so that business
users and end users can edit any page with a few clicks of the mouse. Oracle
Composer runs in all modern browsers and provides a rich, dynamic way to
edit JSF application and portal pages by selecting information and components
from the Business Dictionary or Resource Catalog.
Software developers will be interested to learn that Oracle Composer can
be easily added to their applications and portals during development at
any time to enable this Web 2.0 style of operation, without writing a single
line of code. As many applications require "portal-like" features, such
as customization and personalization, Oracle Composer can simply be dragged
and dropped onto a JSF page to enable this powerful capability.
Customizations change everyone's view of an application or portal
and are typically required to "brand" a delivered application or portal
for a specific customer or purpose. Customizations include simple changes
such as inserting a logo or altering the colors to match those of your company.
They can also involve adding items to a page, changing the layout of a page,
altering a supplied process, and specifically tailoring the delivered application
or portal to meet any business need. Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Composer
provide an extremely flexible model for storing these customizations in
the file system or directly into any database using Oracle Metadata Services
(MDS). For example, to store customizations in a database, Oracle Composer
creates a copy or "sandbox" for pages as they are being edited. This
"sandbox"
is a temporary storage area to save a group of runtime page customizations
before they are either saved and pushed to other users, or discarded. In
this way, customizations can be previewed by others and approved for use
before they are visible to all users.
Personalizations change your view—and only your view—of a portal
or application page. Other users are not affected by the changes you make
to a page. Many web sites and social services on the Internet today allow
users to create their own "personal" page as a place where they decide what
is important to them and organize information so that it is quick and easy
to find. Oracle Composer enables personalizations by displaying information
from Oracle's Business Dictionary or Resource Catalog in a role-based view,
so that users see only components relevant to them. For example, a sales
representative might be able to select a list of current customers, a list
of current leads or sales opportunities, and a list of past customers and
products up for renewal to personalize a page. A customer support representative
might see only a subset of these components available for adding to a personalized
page. The important point is that the page can be tailored by individuals
to add any combination of components to their page whenever they want or
need them without affecting everyone else's view of the page.
Oracle Composer is integrated with Oracle WebCenter Framework and WebCenter
Services. You can add Oracle Composer components to your JSF application
pages to enable users to edit those pages at runtime. You can add Oracle
Composer components at any time during the development lifecycle, when the
requirements of the application demand it. Additionally, you can use the
Page service to enable users to create pages at runtime.
Oracle Composer has been leveraged extensively inside Oracle WebCenter Spaces to allow users to customize and personalize personal and group spaces. The Oracle WebCenter Spaces application provides a working example of how end users can take an active role in managing and altering their work environment to match their specific needs and requirements.