This guide is the primary resource for developers using JDeveloper to create Portal Framework applications, portlets, and custom portal components.
This chapter includes the following topics:
This developer's guide discusses developing Portal Framework applications, portlets, and custom portal components using Oracle JDeveloper. Many of the tasks described in this guide involve activities that require Java, CSS, Application Development Framework (ADF), Expression Language (EL), and related experience.
Major activities described in this guide include:
See chapters on setting up your environment and your team environment in Part I, "Getting Started."
Building Portals with WebCenter Portal Framework
A WebCenter Portal Framework application is a standard ADF web application that includes portal features, like navigation, pages, page templates, content, and more. The chapters in Part I, "Building WebCenter Portal Framework Applications" explain how to create Framework applications and develop assets like skins, templates, and navigation components.
Several parts of this guide contain chapters devoted to working with portal pages, content, look and feel, collaborative features, and so on.
Part I, "Customizing Your Application and Extending Customization Options" discusses creating, customizing, and editing portal pages and customizing task flows used in your portal
Part I, "Integrating and Publishing Content" explains how to integrate content into your portal by connecting to content repositories and working with content display components, like Content Presenter. The part also includes chapters on integrating wikis and blogs into the portal.
Part I, "Integrating and Publishing Content" explains how to integrate content into your portal by connecting to content repositories and working with content display components, like Content Presenter. The part also includes chapters on integrating wikis and blogs into the portal.
Part I, "Enabling Communication and Collaboration" discusses integrating features like discussions, mail, and presence into the portal.
Part I, "Working with People Connections" explains how to integrate people connections features into the portal. People connections provide social networking tools for use in enhancing connection and communication within a project team and throughout an enterprise. It does this through a set of features that include Activity Stream, Connections, Feedback, Message Board, Profile, and Publisher.
Part I, "Helping Users Find Content" discusses how to add links, tags, search, and activity tracking to the portal.
Part I, "Helping Users Keep Track" discusses adding features like analytics, lists, notifications, and related features to the portal.
Developing Custom Components and Extending WebCenter Portal
WebCenter Portal Framework applications can be integrated with other applications, like Seibel, Oracle E-Business Suite, and PeopleSoft. You can use JDeveloper to create custom components, like task flows and managed beans, that can be deployed to the Portal Server and used in Portal Builder. These topics are covered in the chapters of Part I, "Extending WebCenter Portal and Portal Framework Applications."
Working with Portlets and Pagelets
Portlets provide a means of presenting data from multiple sources in a meaningful and related way. Portlets can display excerpts of other web sites, generate summaries of key information, perform searches, and access assembled collections of information from a variety of data sources. Because several different portlets can be placed on a single page, users benefit from a single-source experience even though, in reality, the content may be derived from multiple sources. See the chapters of Part I, "Working with Portlets and Pagelets," for detailed information.
Pagelets are sub-components of a Web page accessed through Pagelet Producer that can be injected into any proxied application. Any application on a Pagelet Producer resource that returns markup can be registered as a pagelet, which can then be displayed in a portal or Framework application, or any other Web application. See the chapters of Part I, "Working with Portlets and Pagelets," for detailed information.
Delivering Personalized Content
Personalization delivers targeted content based on both user and application context for Portal Framework applications, and WebCenter Portal pages using Expression Language (EL) expressions. See Part I, "Delivering Personalized Content."
The security chapter describes security mechanisms and features provided in a Framework application, and how you can use Oracle ADF Security to handle authentication and authorization. See Part I, "Completing Your WebCenter Portal Application." This part also includes guidelines for creating multi-language portals.
In some cases, a portal requires custom components that do not exist out-of-the-box or cannot easily be created with the browser-based Portal Builder. For example, design requirements might call for page templates, page styles, and skins that are branded and organized in a precise way. In this case, you may need to use ADF Faces and CSS to achieve the desired look and feel, and JDeveloper is well-suited to such development. In another use case, custom components may be required that allow for interaction between portal elements and data (for example, using ADF task flows or portlets with event handling). Many such use cases exist.
As a WebCenter Portal developer, you may be asked to create and configure:
Custom portal extensions like task flows, data controls, and backing beans
Portal infrastructure components like page templates and page styles
Personalization components like custom data providers, function providers, and property set locators
JSR 286 portlets (also called "Java portlets")
WebCenter Portal Framework applications
WebCenter Portlet Producer applications
Large-scale portal development projects, like intranets and extranets, require the effort of a multi-role team. The team may include user interface experts, application specialists, QA engineers, Java developers, and others who participate in the portal's overall development and maintenance. See also Chapter 3, "Working Productively in Teams,"