1 Introduction

Federated portals represent an exciting new paradigm for the development, management, testing, and deployment of portal applications. This new, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based paradigm offers immediate and significant savings in time and resources to organizations that develop and manage portals using Oracle WebLogic Portal.

This guide describes how to plan, develop, assemble, and maintain federated WebLogic Portals. As the following section explains, the tasks described in this guide are organized to reflect the stages of the portal life cycle: architecture, development, staging, and production.

This chapter includes these sections:

Section 1.1, "Support for WSRP 2.0"
Section 1.2, "Federation in the Portal Life Cycle"
Section 1.3, "Getting Started"

1.1 Support for WSRP 2.0

WLP supports the WSRP 2.0 OASIS standard and fully supports all of the required WSRP 2.0 features. OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is responsible for creating the WSRP standard. To read more about WSRP 2.0, including the full technical specification, go to: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrp. This standards compliance ensures interoperability between producers and consumers across all platforms that support WSRP 2.0.

Note:

All of the feature extensions, such as render dependencies and event handling, that WLP supported in its WSRP 1.0 implementation are still fully supported with the WSRP 2.0 implementation. In cases where the previously implemented feature extensions are supported by WSRP 2.0, those features have been re-implemented to comply to the WSRP 2.0 standard. Events are one such feature.

WLP also supports several optional WSRP 2.0 features, listed in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1 Optional WSRP 2.0 Features Supported by WLP

Optional WSRP 2.0 Feature	For Detailed Information
Events	See Chapter 7, "Interportlet Communication with Remote Portlets."
Full shared parameter distribution on the consumer	See "Using Shared Parameters" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Portlet Development Guide for Oracle WebLogic Portal.
Client attributes (cookie and header configuration)	See Section 14.14, "Managing Delivery of Headers and Cookies to the Browser."
Portlet-served resources on the producer (for JSR286 portlets only)	See "Using Container Runtime Options" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Portlet Development Guide for Oracle WebLogic Portal.
Importing and Exporting remote portlets	The WLP propagation tool supports the importing and exporting of remote portlets. For details on propagation, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Production Operations Guide for Oracle WebLogic Portal.
Registration properties	See Section 14.19, "Storing Registration Properties."
The `wsrp-extra:doctype` extension	This extension carries the doctype URI as its value. For more information, see the section "Well Known Extensions" in the WSRP 2.0 Specification.

1.2 Federation in the Portal Life Cycle

Like a standard portal, the creation and management of a federated portal flows through a portal life cycle.

The portal life cycle contains four phases:

Section 1.2.1, "Architecture"
Section 1.2.2, "Development"
Section 1.2.3, "Staging"
Section 1.2.4, "Production"

The tasks in this guide are organized according to the portal life cycle, which implies best practices and sequences for creating and updating federated portals. For more information about the portal life cycle, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Overview for Oracle WebLogic Portal.

1.2.1 Architecture

The architecture part of this guide discusses the basic components of a federated portal. A federated architecture promises to streamline and improve the way in which your portal resources, such as portlets, are developed, deployed, and maintained. By understanding the technology that lies behind federated portals, you can more effectively plan for the development of your own federated portal applications.

1.2.2 Development

The development phase of a federated portal focuses primarily on developing portlets, pages, and books that will be offered as remote portlets, pages, and books to consumers. Developers need to be aware of the techniques and best practices for developing remote portlets, pages, and books in a WebLogic Portal environment.

In the development stage, careful attention to best practices is crucial. Wherever possible, this guide makes those best practices clear.

1.2.3 Staging

As for all portal development, Oracle recommends that you deploy your portal to a staging environment, where it can be assembled and tested before going live. In the staging environment, you use the WebLogic Portal Administration Portal to assemble and configure federated portals. The Administration Portal lets you search for and consume remote portlets, books, and pages. In the staging environment, you also test your federated portal before propagating it to a live production system.

1.2.4 Production

A production portal is live and available to end users. A portal in production can be modified by administrators using the Administration Portal. For instance, an administrator might add additional remote portlets to a portal or otherwise change the contents of a portal.

1.3 Getting Started

This section describes the basic prerequisites to using this guide, lists guides containing related information and topics, and briefly explains how to use this guide.

This section includes the following topics:

Section 1.3.1, "Prerequisites"
Section 1.3.2, "Related Guides"
Section 1.3.3, "Using this Guide"

1.3.1 Prerequisites

This guide does not assume that you are familiar with federation or its related standards and technologies, such as WSRP. Whenever possible, this guide provides sufficient background information or refers to appropriate documents and specifications.

Tip:

See Section 3.7, "For More Technical Details" for a list of specifications and white papers related to WSRP and related technology. This material provides an excellent background for developers who plan to design and create federated portals.

In general, this guide assumes that you are familiar with the basic operation of the tools used to create WebLogic portals and desktops, particularly Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE) and the Administration Portal. The following section, Section 1.3.2, "Related Guides", lists other guides that you may want to refer to before attempting to develop federated portals.

1.3.2 Related Guides

This guide covers topics that are specific to developing and assembling federated portals. In general, this guide assumes that you are familiar with the basic concepts and tools required for both portal and portlet development. If you are planning to create federated portals, we recommend that you review the following guides:

Whenever possible, this guide includes cross references to material in these other guides.

1.3.3 Using this Guide

If you are new to federation we recommend that you begin with the chapters in Part I Architecture. These chapters provide a detailed overview of federated portals, and describe the technological components that make up federation.

Part II Development includes the topics that are of primary interest to developers creating portal components with Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. This part includes chapters on creating remote portlets, establishing interportlet communication with remote portlets, working with producers, using custom events, and other topics.

Part III Staging and Part IV Production are targeted typically toward users who use the Administration Portal to assemble and manage federated portals and establish security.