The Portal Registry

The portal registry is a key administrative component within the metadata of a PeopleSoft database. A portal registry is a hierarchical structure in which URLs accessed by way of the portal are organized, classified, and registered. Each portal registry consists of the following objects:

• Folders.

  Folders group and organize content references into a hierarchy. Each folder can contain content references as well as other folders.

  Every portal registry contains a root folder and a Portal Objects folder. The Portal Objects folder contains administrative objects specific to the portal and includes the following folders: Homepage, Navigation Collections, Pagelets, Template Pagelets, and Templates.

  In addition to these standard folders, several folders typically are located directly under the root folder: one folder for PeopleTools (administrative references) and other main folders for each PeopleSoft application. These main application folders contain the folders and content references associated with each PeopleSoft application that you've licensed.

• Content references.

  Content references are URLs that have been registered in a portal registry. They can be PeopleSoft application pages or external web pages. Content references fall into four main categories: pagelets, target content, templates, and homepage tabs.

  In addition to specifying a URL, each content reference includes additional information such as its creator, effective dates, associated template, search keywords, and so forth. Registry URLs can point to any website that responds to HTTP requests with an HTML response—that is, a static or dynamic web page.

  For example, a content reference could be a URL pointing to a page in a PeopleSoft application. Or a content reference could point to static HTML pages on an intranet site, such as a procurement or expense policy document, or dynamic pages created by an analytic or reporting system. Access to content references is controlled by security permission lists assigned to each content reference. Any portal content can be limited to a specified group of users, or made public and available to any authorized portal users.

• Nodes.

  Nodes refer to a source of HTML content. They primarily identify the universal resource indicator (URI). A URI is a subset of the URL that points to the location of the resource. It does not include the content information, such as the target file or application and any parameters passed to that resource.

The portal registry's hierarchical structure enables a portal administrator to more easily create a classification and navigation system in which content references can be registered and managed for all portal users. PeopleTools provides portal administration pages for this purpose. Additionally, the portal includes a registry application programming interface (API) for maintaining the portal registry from PeopleCode.

To improve performance, a copy of the registry is also stored on the application server in cache files. This is how the portal servlet accesses the registry at runtime.