Working with Providers

Consider the following when planning to deploy providers:

• URLScraperProvider. Typically you use this provider to access dynamic content that is supplied by another web container’s web-based system. It uses HTTP and HTTPS calls to retrieve the content. This provider puts high requirements on the back-end system, as the back-end system has to be highly scalable and available. Performance needs to be in tenths of a second to show high performance. This provider is very useful for proof of concept in the trial phase of your portal deployment due to the simplicity of configuration.

  URLScraperProvider also performs some level of rewriting every time it retrieves a page. For example, if a channel retrieves a news page that contains a picture that is hosted on another web site, for the portal to be able to display that picture, the URL of that picture needs to be rewritten. The portal does not host that picture, so URLScraperProvider needs to rewrite that picture URL to present it to portal users.

  The URL Scraper provider that is part of Portal Server can also function as a file scraper provider.

  To use URLScraperProvider as a file scraper provider, specify the URL as follows:

  String name=“url”value="file://path/filename”

  This is the best performing provider, in terms of how fast it retrieves content. On the first fetch of content, performance for this provider is usually in the low ten milliseconds. On subsequent requests, using a built-in caching mechanism, this provider can usually deliver content in one millisecond or less. If applicable, consider using the file scraper provider in place of the URL Scraper provider.

• JSPProvider. Uses JavaServer Pages^TM (JSP) technology. JSPProvider obtains content from one or more JSP files. A JSP file can be a static document (HTML only) or a standard JSP file with HTML and Java programming language embedded within tags. A JSP file can include other JSP files. However, only the topmost JSP file can be configured through the display profile. The topmost JSP files are defined through the contentPage, editPage, and processPage properties.

• LoginProvider. Provides access to the Access Manager authentication service through a Portal Desktop channel. This provider enables anonymous Portal Desktop login so that a user can log in directly from the Portal Desktop.

• XMLProvider. Transforms an XML document into HTML using an XSLT (XML Style Sheet Language) file. You must create the appropriate XSLT file to match the XML document type. XMLProvider is an extension of URLScraperProvider. This provider uses the javax.xml.transform classes provided with j2se 1.5.

• SimpleWebServiceProvider.As a subclass of URLScraperProvider, SimpleWebServicProvider retrieves the WSDL file and communicates with the associated Web service through Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).