Introduction to Administration for WebCenter Portal

Introducing Oracle WebCenter Portal

Companies use Oracle WebCenter Portal to build enterprise-scale intranet and extranet portals that provide a foundation for the next-generation user experience (UX) with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Fusion Applications. Portals built with Oracle WebCenter Portal commonly support thousands of users who create, update, and access content and data from multiple back-end sources. Oracle WebCenter Portal delivers intuitive user experiences by leveraging the best UX capabilities from a significant portfolio of leading portal products and related technologies. From the user's perspective, the integration is seamless.

Oracle WebCenter Portal provides users with a personalized, secure, and efficient way of consuming information and interacting with people and applications in the context of business processes. It optimizes the connections between people, information, and applications; provides business activity streams so users can navigate, discover, and access content in context; and offers dynamic personalization of applications, portals, and sites to provide a customized experience.

This section describes Oracle WebCenter Portal components and architecture in the following topics:

Oracle WebCenter Portal Architecture

Oracle WebCenter Portal comprises the following components:

WebCenter Portlets

Develop and integrate portlets into WebCenter Portal:

Support for JSR-168 and JSR-286 standards-based WSRP portlets
Oracle JSF Portlet Bridge, which lets you expose JSF pages and Oracle ADF task flows as standards-based portlets

Application Development Framework

The Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) is a productivity layer that sits on top of JSF and provides:

Unified access to back ends such as databases, web services, XML, CSV, and BPEL
Data binding (JSR 227) connecting the user interface with back-end data controls
Over 100 data-aware JSF view components
Native component model that includes task flows
Fine grained JAAS security model

Portal Composer

Portal Composer comprises all the browser-based creating, editing, and administration areas of WebCenter Portal:

A browser-based platform for creating and administering enterprise portals, multiple sites, and communities.
A Home portal, where users have access to their profile, available portals, portal templates, and documents, and can customize certain elements of their own view of the Home portal.
A browser-based portal editor, where users can perform runtime portal customization to modify portal settings and create portal pages and device-enabled page variants. An intuitive page editor enables users to modify page layout, properties, wiring, and include components such as task flows, portlets, blogs, wikis, RSS, activity stream, search, and more.

Tools and Services

Table 1-1 lists the tools and services available in WebCenter Portal.

Table 1-1 WebCenter Portal Tools and Services

A Through I	L Through T
Activity Stream	Links
Analytics	Lists
Announcements (Only in upgraded installations)	Mail
Discussions (Only in upgraded installations)	Notes
Documents (includes Wikis and Blogs)	People Connections Polls
Events	RSS
Instant Messaging and Presence (IMP)	Search Tags

WebCenter Portal's tools and services provide:

Seamless integration with enterprise-level services
Thin adapter layer to abstract back-end services. For example:
- Content adapters: Content Server
- Presence adapters: Microsoft Lync
Back-end systems represented by a unified connection architecture
User interface to services presented through rich task flow components

For more information, see Managing Tools and Services.

Discussion Server

A discussion server is available so you can integrate discussion forums and announcements into your portals. For information, see Managing Announcements and Discussions.

Note:

Oracle WebCenter Portal has deprecated the support for Jive features (announcements and discussions). If you have upgraded from a prior release to Release 12c (12.2.1.4.0), Jive features remain available in your upgraded instance but Oracle support is not provided for these features. In the next release, Jive features will not be available even in the upgraded instances

Analytics

WebCenter Portal's analytics capability enables users to view various user activity reports, for example:

Login data
Page views
Portlet views
Search metrics
Page response data
Portal usage

For information, see Managing Analytics.

Oracle WebCenter Portal Topology

This section describes Oracle WebCenter Portal topology and configuration in the following topics:

Oracle WebCenter Portal Directory Structure

Oracle WebCenter Portal installation creates the WebCenter Portal product home directory (wcportal), under the Oracle Home directory, that contains WebCenter Portal binaries and supporting files. The following figure describes directory structure of an Oracle WebCenter Portal installation.

Figure 1-1 Directory Structure of an Oracle WebCenter Portal Installation

Description of "Figure 1-1 Directory Structure of an Oracle WebCenter Portal Installation"

The installation also creates a WebCenter Portaldomain (default name base_domain), containing the administration server and several managed servers to host various WebCenter Portal components. In Figure 1-2, applications are shown in yellow, while the managed servers they run on are shown in brown.

Figure 1-2 Oracle WebCenter Portal Topology Out-of-the-Box

Description of "Figure 1-2 Oracle WebCenter Portal Topology Out-of-the-Box"

Out-of-the-box managed servers host the following Oracle WebCenter Portal components:

WC_Portal- Hosts WebCenter Portal, Oracle's out-of-the-box portal application, and analytics
WC_Portlet - Hosts out-of-the-box portlets and WebCenter Portal tools
WC_Collaboration - Hosts the discussions server and any additional services that you choose to integrate

For more information about managed servers, see Understanding Oracle Fusion Middleware Concepts in Administering Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Oracle WebCenter Portal Managed Servers

During Oracle WebCenter Portal installation, the managed servers are provisioned with system libraries and Oracle ADF libraries. Table 1-2 lists the managed servers and the applications that run on them.

Table 1-2 Oracle WebCenter Portal Managed Servers and Applications

Managed Server	Installed Applications	Application Name
WC_Portal	WebCenter Portal WebCenter Portal online help Analytics	webcenter webcenter-help analytics-collector
WC_Portlet	WSRP tools	portalTools wsrp-tools
WC_Collaboration	Discussions Server	owc_discussions

Managed Server

Installed Applications

Application Name

WC_Portal

WebCenter Portal

WebCenter Portal online help

Analytics

webcenter

webcenter-help

analytics-collector

WC_Portlet

WSRP tools

portalTools

wsrp-tools

WC_Collaboration

Discussions Server

owc_discussions

Oracle WebCenter Portal Configuration Considerations

The main configuration files for WebCenter Portal are listed and described in Table 1-3. Both these files are supplied within the application deployment .EAR file.

Table 1-3 WebCenter Portal Configuration Files

Artifact	Purpose
`adf-config.xml`	Stores basic configuration for Application Development Framework (ADF) and application settings, such as which discussions server or mail server WebCenter Portal is currently using.
`connections.xml`	Stores basic configuration for connections to external services.

WebCenter Portal uses the Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) repository to store its configuration data; it accesses the MDS repository as a JDBC data source within the Oracle WebLogic framework.

The MDS repository stores post deployment configuration changes for WebCenter Portal as application customizations. MDS uses the original deployed versions of adf-config.xml and connections.xml as base documents and stores all subsequent application customizations separately into MDS using a single customization layer.

When WebCenter Portal starts up, application customizations stored in MDS are applied to the appropriate base documents and the application uses the merged documents (base documents with customizations) as the final set of configuration properties.

For applications that are deployed to a server cluster, all members of a cluster read from the same location in the MDS repository.

Typically, there is no need for administrators to examine or manually change the content of base documents (or MDS customization data) for files such as adf-config.xml and connections.xml, as Oracle provides several administration tools for post deployment configuration. If you must locate the base documents or review the information in MDS, read Oracle WebCenter Portal Configuration.

To find out more about the configuration tools available, see Oracle WebCenter Portal Administration Tools.

Note:

Oracle does not recommend that you edit adf-config.xml or connections.xml by hand as this can lead to misconfiguration.

While WebCenter Portal stores post deployment configuration information in MDS, configuration information for portlet producers and the discussion server is stored in the file system or the database (Table 1-4).

Table 1-4 WebCenter Portal Configuration Location

Application	Configuration Stored in MDS	Configuration Stored in File System	Configuration Stored in Database
WebCenter Portal	Yes	No	No
Portlet producers	No	Yes	No
Discussions server	No	Yes	Yes

Discussions Server Configuration

Oracle WebCenter Portal's discussions server stores configuration information in its database. Additionally, it stores startup configuration information in DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/servers/WC_COLLABORATION/owc_discussions. This directory contains jive_startup.xml, jive.license files, and a logs directory containing log files for the discussions server instance.

Oracle WebCenter Portal State and Configuration Persistence

WebCenter Portal runs as a J2EE application with application state and configuration persisted to the MDS repository. User session information within the application is held locally in memory. In a cluster environment, this state is replicated to other members of the cluster.

Application customizations within a portlet or service environment are persisted by that service. Out-of-the-box, Oracle portlets, any custom portlets you build, and the discussions server, all have their own database persistence mechanisms.

Analytics Considerations

WebCenter Portal's analytics capability is stateless. Requests received by analytics collectors are executed immediately. Any in-transit state, such as a request initiated by WebCenter Portal or a request processed by the analytics collector, is not guaranteed.

Oracle WebCenter Portal Log File Locations

Operations performed by WebCenter Portal, portlet producers, discussion servers, and so on, are logged directly to the WebLogic managed server where the application is running:

DOMAIN_HOME/servers/Server_Name/logs/Server_Name-diagnostic.log

For example, diagnostics for WebCenter Portal are logged to: /base_domain/servers/WC_Portal/logs/WC_Portal-diagnostic.log

You can view the log files for each WebLogic managed server from the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console. To view the logs, access the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console http://<admin_server_host>:<port>/console, and click Diagnostics-Log Files.

You can also view and configure diagnostic logs through Fusion Middleware Control, see Viewing and Configuring Log Information.

Understanding the Oracle WebCenter Portal Installation

Installing WebCenter Portal requires a little bit of planning. Some of the questions to consider are:

What Oracle WebCenter Portal components will be used?
How many users will access this deployment?
How can I provide high availability for my enterprise deployment?
How can I secure WebCenter Portal?

For more information about Oracle WebCenter Portal installation and post-installation administration tasks, see Roadmap for Installing and Configuring the Standard Installation Topologies in Installing and Configuring Oracle WebCenter Portal.

For post installation high availability configuration, see Setting up a Highly Available Environment in High Availability Guide.

Understanding Administrative Operations, Roles, and Tools

Oracle WebCenter Portal provides several different tools with which to deploy, configure, start and stop, and maintain WebCenter Portal. Your ability to perform administration tasks depends on the Oracle WebLogic Server role you are assigned to—Admin, Operator, or Monitor. Table 1-5 lists the Oracle WebLogic Server roles needed for common operations. These roles apply whether the operations are performed through Fusion Middleware Control, WLST commands, or the WebLogic Server Administration Console.

Table 1-5 WebCenter Portal Operations and Oracle WebLogic Server Roles

Operation	Admin Role	Operator Role	Monitor Role
Start and stop	Yes	Yes	No
View performance metrics	Yes	Yes	Yes
View log information	Yes	Yes	Yes
Configure log files	Yes	Yes	Yes
View configuration	Yes	Yes	Yes
Configure new connections	Yes	Yes	No
Edit connections	Yes	Yes	No
Delete connections	Yes	Yes	No
Deploy applications	Yes	No	No
Configure security	Yes	No	No
View security (application roles/policies)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Export entire application	Yes	No	No
Import entire application	Yes	No	No

Table 1-6 summarizes which tools you can use to perform various administrative operations relating to WebCenter Portal. Oracle WebCenter Portal Administration Tools describes the administrative tools.

Table 1-6 WebCenter Portal Operations and Administration Tools

Operation	Fusion Middleware Control	WLST Commands	WebLogic Server Admin Console	WebCenter Portal Admin
Start and stop	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
View performance metrics	Yes	No	No	No
View log information	Yes	No	No	No
Configure log files	Yes	No	No	No
View configuration	Yes	Yes	No	No
Configure new connections	Yes	Yes	No	No
Edit connections	Yes	Yes	No	No
Delete connections	Yes	Yes	No	No
Manage portlet producers	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Manage external applications	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Deploy applications	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Configure security	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Configure workflows	Yes	Yes	No	No
Export entire application	Yes	Yes	No	No
Import entire application	Yes	Yes	No	No
Customize WebCenter Portal	No	No	No	Yes
Manage application users and roles	No	No	No	Yes
Manage pages	No	No	No	Yes
Manage portals	No	No	No	Yes
Export portals	No	No	No	Yes
Import portals	No	No	No	Yes

Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics

Performance monitoring helps administrators identify issues and performance bottlenecks in their environment. Monitoring WebCenter Portal Performance describes the range of performance metrics available for WebCenter Portal and how to monitor them using Fusion Middleware Control. It also describes how to troubleshoot issues by analyzing information that is recorded in diagnostic log files.

Understanding Security

The recommended security model for Oracle WebCenter Portal is based on Oracle ADF Security, which implements the Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) model. The following chapters describe security configuration for WebCenter Portal applications:

Data Migration, Backup, and Recovery

Oracle WebCenter Portal stores data related to its configuration and content for the various feature areas in several locations. To facilitate disaster recovery and the full production lifecycle from development through staging and production, Oracle WebCenter Portal provides a set of utilities that enable you to back up this data, and move the data between staging and production environments.

Managing WebCenter Portal Backup, Recovery, and Cloning describes the backup, import, and export capabilities and tools available for these tasks.

Oracle WebCenter Portal Administration Tools

Oracle WebCenter Portal offers the following administration tools:

Administrators should use these tools, rather than edit the configuration files, to perform administrative tasks. For help to decide which tool is best for you, see Configuration Tools.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control Console

Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control Console is a browser-based management application that is deployed when you install Oracle WebCenter Portal. From Fusion Middleware Control Console, you can monitor and administer a domain (such as one containing Oracle WebCenter Portal).

Fusion Middleware Control organizes a wide variety of performance data and administrative functions into distinct, web-based home pages. These home pages make it easy to locate the most important monitoring data and the most commonly used administrative functions for any WebCenter Portal component—all from your web browser. For general information about the Fusion Middleware Control Console, see Getting Started Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control in Administering Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Fusion Middleware Control is the primary management tool for Oracle WebCenter Portal and can be used to:

Configure back-end services and tools
Configure security management
Control process lifecycle
Access log files and manage log configuration
Manage data migration
Monitor performance
Diagnose run-time problems
Manage related components, such as the parent Managed Server, MDS, and portlet producers

Displaying Fusion Middleware Control Console

For information about starting Fusion Middleware Control, see Displaying Fusion Middleware Control Console.

Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console

The Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console is a browser-based, graphical user interface that you use to manage a WebLogic Server domain.

The Administration Server hosts the Administration Console, which is a Web application accessible from any supported Web browser with network access to the Administration Server Managed Servers host applications.

Use the Administration Console to:

Configure, start, and stop WebLogic Server instances
Configure WebLogic Server clusters
Configure WebLogic Server services, such as database connectivity (JDBC) and messaging (JMS)
Configure security parameters, including creating and managing users, groups, and roles
Configure and deploy your applications
Monitor server and application performance
View server and domain log files
View application deployment descriptors
Edit selected run-time application deployment descriptor elements

For more information about the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console, see Displaying the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console in Administering Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Locking Domain Configuration

You must lock configuration settings for a domain in the production mode before making any configuration changes. Navigate to the Administration Console's Change Center, and click Lock & Edit.

Once configuration updates are complete, release the changes by clicking Release Configuration.

If the domain is in the development mode, the Lock & Edit option is not available, and changes are automatically committed.

Figure 1-3 Change Center in Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console

Oracle WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST)

Oracle provides the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) to manage Oracle Fusion Middleware components, such as Oracle WebCenter Portal, from the command line.

WLST is a complete, command-line scripting environment for managing Oracle WebLogic Server domains, based on Jython. In addition to supporting standard Jython features such as local variables, conditional variables, and flow control statements, WLST provides a set of scripting functions (commands) that are specific to Oracle WebLogic Server. You can extend the WebLogic scripting language to suit your needs by following the Jython language syntax.

Oracle provides WLST commands for fully administering and monitoring WebCenter Portal and managing connections to content repositories, portlet producers, external applications, and other back-end services. All Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST commands are described in WebCenterPortal Custom WLST Commands in WebCenter WLST Command Reference Reference.

Running Oracle WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) Commands

You must run all Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST commands from your Oracle home directory (ORACLE_HOME).

Note:

If you attempt to run WLST commands from the wrong directory, you will see a NameError. Always run the WLST commands from the Oracle home directory.

To run WLST from the command line:

Navigate to your Oracle home directory and invoke the WLST script:

(UNIX) ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh

(Windows) ORACLE_HOME\common\bin\wlst.cmd
At the WLST command prompt, enter the following command to connect to the Administration Server for Oracle WebCenter Portal:
```
wls:/offline>connect('user_name','password', 'protocol(optional):host_name:port_number')
```
where
- user_name is the username of the operator who is connecting to the Administration Server
- password is the password of the operator who is connecting to the Administration Server
- protocol is the protocol for connecting to the Administration Server and is optional
- host_name is the host name of the Administration Server
- port_number is the port number of the Administration Server
For example:
```
connect(username='weblogic', password='mypassword', url='t3://myhost.example.com:7001')
```
If preferred, you can connect to the Administration Server in interactive mode without parameters:
```
wls:/offline> connect()
Please enter your username :weblogic
Please enter your password :
Please enter your server URL [t3://localhost:7001]:t3://myhost.example.com:7001
Connecting to t3://myhost.example.com:7001 with userid weblogic ...
Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'WC_Domain'.
```
For help with this command, type help('connect') at the WLST command prompt.
Note:

If SSL is enabled, you must edit the wlst.sh or wlst.cmd file and append the following to JVM_ARGS:
```
-Dweblogic.security.SSL.ignoreHostnameVerification=true
-Dweblogic.security.TrustKeyStore=DemoTrust
```
or setenv CONFIG_JVM_ARGS
```
-Dweblogic.security.SSL.ignoreHostnameVerification=true
-Dweblogic.security.TrustKeyStore=DemoTrust
```
Once connected to the Administration Server you can run Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST commands, and any other generic WLST command.

Hints and Tips Running for Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST Commands

To list Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST commands, type: help('webcenter') at the WLST command prompt.

If the message No help for webcenter found... displays, you are probably running the WLST script from the wrong directory, for example, you might be running wlst.sh or wlst.cmd from the oracle_common directory instead of ORACLE_HOME/common/bin.
For help on a particular command, type: help('WLST_command_name') at the WLST command prompt.
Include argument names when running commands and especially when writing WLST scripts. For example, it is good practice to enter:

createExtAppConnection(appName='webcenter', name='myXApp'...

rather than:

createExtAppConnection('webcenter', 'myXApp'...

Either syntax is valid but when you include the argument names, errors and misconfiguration is less likely. Also, if arguments are added in the future, the command does not fail or configure the wrong property.
In a clustered environment, remember to specify the "server" argument when running commands. All Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST commands include a server argument which becomes mandatory when WebCenter Portal is deployed to cluster.
Online documentation for Oracle WebCenter Portal WLST commands is available in WebCenter Portal Custom WLST Commands in WebCenter WLST Command Reference Reference.

System MBean Browser

Fusion Middleware Control provides a set of MBean browsers that allow you to browse the MBeans for an Oracle WebLogic Server or for a selected application.

Note:

While you can monitor and configure WebCenter Portal MBeans from the System MBean browser, it is not the preferred tool for configuration. Oracle recommends that you configure WebCenter Portal settings from its home page using Fusion Middleware Control or by using WLST commands.

To access application MBeans:

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control and navigate to the home page for WebCenter Portal. For more information, see Navigating to the Home Page for WebCenter Portal.
From the WebCenter Portal menu, select System MBean Browser.
Under Application Defined MBeans, navigate to the MBean you want to view or configure.
For example, you might want to navigate to MBeans for adf-config.xml and connections.xml as follows:
- adf-config - Click oracle.adf.share.config >Server: name >Application: name >ADFConfig >ADFConfig >ADFConfig
- connections - Click oracle.adf.share.connections >Server: name >Application: name >ADFConnnections >ADFConnections
To view an MBean's attributes, select the MBean, then on the Attributes tab, click the required attribute. Values of some attributes can be changed. To do so, enter the value in the Value column.

Figure 1-4 Systems MBean Browser

Description of "Figure 1-4 Systems MBean Browser"
Navigate to the parent MBean (for example, ADFConfig or ADFConnections), select the Operations tab, and click save to save the changes.
Restart the managed server on which WebCenter Portal is deployed. For more information, see Starting and Stopping Managed Servers for WebCenter Portal Application Deployments.

WebCenter Portal Administration Pages

WebCenter Portal provides several administration pages, which appear only to users who have logged in to WebCenter Portal using an administrator user name and password.

WebCenter Portal administration pages allow you to:

Customize WebCenter Portal
Manage users and roles
Manage tool and service settings
Manage portlet producers and external applications
Manage individual portals and portal templates
Create and manage business role pages
Manage personal pages
Export and import individual portals and portal templates

For more information, see Accessing the Settings Pages in WebCenter Portal Administration.