H WebLogic Portal (WLP) Support

This appendix provides a detailed discussion of the support available for the accurate monitoring of WebLogic Portal (WLP)-based applications.

H.1 Introduction

RUEI supports out-of-the-box monitoring of WLP applications. It automatically discovers WLP web applications, and translates network objects to business functions. Using this support, individual user actions are automatically matched to the correct web application, desktop, portal, book, and page to provide contextual analysis.

RUEI supports the monitoring of file-based portals as well as streaming portals. For the latter, the Disc framework must be enabled. For the monitoring of file-based portals with the Disc framework not enabled, additional information must be uploaded about the configuration of the monitored portal. This is described in Section H.3, "Synchronizing RUEI with your WLP Environment". Note that the monitoring of streaming portals that do not use the Disc framework is not supported.

The monitoring support described in the rest of this appendix has been verified against applications based on WLP version 10.3.

H.2 Creating WLP Suite Definitions

You can create suite definitions for WLP-based applications in the same way as for any other supported Oracle Enterprise architecture. The procedure to create suites is described in Section 10.1, "Working With Suites".

H.3 Synchronizing RUEI with your WLP Environment

If the monitored suite instance is a file-based portal with the Disc framework not enabled, RUEI needs to understand how the portal is implemented within your environment. Do the following:

  1. Copy the create_WLP_info.pl script from the RUEI_DATA/processor/local/download directory to the location where you intend to run the script. Copy to the same location the .portal file used by the monitored application.

  2. Run the create_WLP_info.pl script on the Report system. This script creates translations for the monitored environment. The script must be run with the following required parameter:

    perl create_WLP_info.pl -portal file.portal
    

    where file is the name of the .portal file used by the monitored application.

    In multiple instance environments, run the script for each required instance, and separately preserve their created .txt files. Create a separate suite definition for each instance, as described in Section 10.1.1, "Creating Suite Definitions".

  3. Follow the procedure described in Section 10.1.2, "Uploading Configuration Files" to upload the generated files to the Reporter System.

H.4 Specifying the Cookie Technology

When creating a WLP suite instance, a preconfigured cookie for the WLP environment is automatically created. This is implemented as a custom cookie, with the name JSESSIONID. Because WLP is based on the WebLogic technology, it is likely that the preconfigured cookie is suitable for your WLP applications. However, depending on the configuration of your environment, you may need to modify this. In addition, to enable RUEI to monitor and track users over the complete session, you should ensure the cookie path is set to "/". See Section 12.2, "Specifying the Session Tracking Mechanism" for more information on cookie configuration.

H.5 Configuring User Authentication

RUEI supports out-of-the-box monitoring of WLP applications that employ user authentication based on the REST framework. However, if the monitored portal uses some other user authentication mechanism, then this needs to be configured. The procedure to do so is described in Section 7.3.14, "Defining User Identification".

H.6 Suite Definition Mappings

A WLP application can be identified with a hostname. Generally, a WLP suite can be accessed in two ways: using only the hostname, or using the fully-qualified hostname (including the domain). Generally, you only need to specify the domain.

H.7 Data Items

The WLP-specific data items shown in Table H-1 are reported by RUEI.

Table H-1 WLP-specific Data items

Item Description

WLP Action

Name of the action. WebLogic actions are performed on page sometimes involving a portlet. In the latter case, the second level shows the portlet involved when seen.

WLP Book

Name of the WebLogic book that contains pages with portlets.

WLP Desktop

Name of the WebLogic desktop. Together with WebLogic Portal WebLogic Web application and suite name (as defined in Configurations / Suites) comprise the application name in RUEI.

WLP Page

Name of the WebLogic page. On pages, portlets are located. The pages themselves are contained in WebLogic books.

WLP Portal

Name of the WebLogic portal. Together with WebLogic desktop, WebLogic Web application, and suite name (as defined in Configurations / Suites) comprise the application name in RUEI.

WLP Portlet

Name of the WebLogic portlet.

WLP Web Application

Name of the WebLogic Web application. Together with WebLogic Portal WebLogic desktop and suite name (as defined in Configurations / Suites) comprise the application name in RUEI.


H.8 Known Limitations

Currently, RUEI does not support all WLP functionality. In particular, the following known limitations exist.

  • Reporting is based on the last activated area. Hence, when a end user is browsing simultaneously in multiple browser windows, the reported page name may contain incorrect information.

  • Reporting on portlet level is very limited. For streaming portals, when actions involve a portlet (such as "move portlet on page"), and the portlet definition label is found in the response content or the URL of the action, is the portlet definition label reported in the WLP group. In the All pages group, portlets are not reported.

    For file-based portals, when the action involves a portlet, the instance label is reported because file-based portals do not have portlet definition labels. File-based portlet instance labels are only reported when a portal configuration file is upload (see Section H.3, "Synchronizing RUEI with your WLP Environment").

  • The monitoring of streaming portals with the Disc framework not enabled is not supported.

  • Applications that make use of a Rich Internet Application (RIA) framework (such as Ajax) may have reduced replay capability.