As a developer, you can provide access to portal resources through the Portal Server (and the Access Manager) APIs. For example, you can develop channel content to define aggregation of both those channels as well as channels built from the predefined set into your site’s portal.
In extending the Portal Server, use the APIs in the following functional areas:
Desktop - Using the Provider API, you can create new providers.
Search service - Search APIs enable you to customize the search robot behavior and manipulate the Search database itself.
Sun Java System Access Manager - There are five APIs packaged with the Access Manager: authentication, debugging, logging, client detection, and Single Sign-on (SSO). You can extend the authentication and client detection APIs. The other APIs that can be used include the functional areas of SSO, debugging, and logging. This guide does not describe the Access Manager APIs in detail, but instead provides a general overview. See theAccess Manager documentation for more information on programming with those APIs.
The display profile is a set of XML documents used to define and configure providers and channels in the Portal Server. The display profile defines:
Providers
Channels
Container channels
A provider’s display profile document acts as a template for creating channels. They define the set of properties that channels based on this provider will make use of, as well as providing default values for these properties where appropriate. Channels and container channels must reference a provider, and will use their default property values unless the property is redefined in the channel.
The display profile used to generate a user’s Desktop is constructed by merging together multiple display profile documents. Each display profile contains a series of XML instructions for storing channel properties.
The display profile documents are stored in their entirety as a single attribute in the Sun Java System Access Manager services layer. That is, the display profile documents are an LDAP attribute residing in an instance of the Sun Java System Directory Server.
See the Sun Java System Portal Server7.1 Technical Reference Guide for a complete discussion of the display profile.