| Last Updated: | August 8, 2003 |
| Status: | Production |
| Version: | PDK Release 2, (9.0.2.6.2 and later) |
Introduction
Web Clipping Provider Dependencies
Web Clipping Provider Test Page
Registering the Web Clipping Provider
Troubleshooting
Note: Before you configure the Web Clipping Provider, you must install the PDK-Portal Tools. This is described in the installing.portaltools.html document, which can be found under the pdk/portalTools directory when you unzip pdk.zip.
This article describes how to configure the Web Clipping Web provider that is included in the PDK-Portal Tools download.
The Web Clipping Web Provider is a Portlet Provider for Oracle Portal. The Web Clipping Portlet enables Page Designers to collect existing Web content into centralized Portal pages as a means of content consolidation. Within a corporate intranet, various Web sites may serve different vertical purposes. United into a Portal Page these vertical information sources take on new meanings in the ways that they are applied.
The Web Clipping Provider is further described by the list of features it supports.
The OracleAS components shown in the table below are required for the Web Clipping Provider to function properly. These are installed as part of the OracleAS installation. For more information, see installing.portaltools.html (located under the pdk/portalTools directory when you unzip pdk.zip).
| Component | Description | Required? | Degradation Policy if Not Installed or Configured |
| Oracle9i DB Standard or Enterprise Edition | Required for persistent storage of Web Clipping Definitions | Web Clipping Portlet will not work in the absence of a database. The test page guides the user through the steps of setting up the necessary information for connecting to the the Oracle9 i database that will host the Web Clipping Repository. | |
| Web Cache | Required for invalidation based caching of Web Clipping portlet content | Portlet can use validation-based caching instead if Web Cache is not configured. | |
| Advanced Security Option (ASO) | Database dependency on setting up secure connections to the Web Clipping Repository | This option can be configured from the test Page. If ASO is configured to be "on" for the Web Clipping Provider, but the database does not have the corresponding setup for ASO, connections will revert to not use ASO while warnings will be logged for the administrator. |
You can configure all of the above components using the Web Clipping Provider test page.
The Web Clipping Provider Test Page gives you an indication of whether the provider is functioning properly. You can access this Test Page by clicking on the Web Clipping Provider link from the Portal Tools Application Welcome Page (http://<server>:<host>/portalTools). The Test Page displays:
The following is the required configuration for the Web Clipping Provider to function properly:
Web Clippings have definitions that need to be stored persistently in a Web Clipping Repository hosted by an Oracle 9i database. The provider Test Page will first automatically detect whether the Web Clipping Provider is configured to access the database. If not, it will display an Edit link next to the status of the Web Clipping Repository. This enables you to (re)configure the database connection parameters in the Edit Provider Page.
If this is the first time you're installing the Web Clipping Provider, you'll need to request a database user account from your Oracle 9i database administrator before you begin configuring. The following SQLPlus snippet can be used by your DBA to create the user:
CREATE USER <username>
IDENTIFIED BY <password> ;
GRANT connect, restricted session, resource
TO <username> ;
To configure the repository settings:
Each time you visit the Test Page, a sanity check will be performed to ensure that you are able to connect to a database hosting the Web Clipping Repository. If successful, the Test Page next determines whether the correct database tables are present in the specified schema. If so, the test page reports that the Web Clipping is ready to use. Otherwise, an Install link displays next to the status of the Web Clipping Repository on the Test Page. You can click it to dynamically install the required schema tables into the user that you provided earlier.
If you have specified for your Repository Target the same database as
the one used for a PDK 9.0.2.4.0 installation before, as part of your
PDK upgrade, you will be notified that a Repository Upgrade also
needs to take place. Upon entering the Web Clipping Provider Test
Page, you'll see a Upgrade (from 9.0.2.4.0) link that allows
you to do a one-click upgrade for installing new tables as well as
migrating existing Clipping Definitions to the latest versions.
Note: After the upgrade, the Clipping Definitions stored in
in the Web Clipping Repository can no longer work with PDK 9.0.2.4.0.
The following are the optional configurations for the Web Clipping Provider. If not available, the provider will degrade gracefully, or a specific functionality may become unavailable. On the Web Clipping Test page, click the links in the Action column next to a Setting to configure it.
If a proxy server is required for the provider to make HTTP connections
to an HTTP server outside the firewall, you need to set up the HTTP proxy
information. To do this, click Edit next to the status of the
HTTP Proxy on the Web Clipping Provider Test Page. The Edit Provider page
displays, on which you can specify the HTTP Proxy Host and the
HTTP Proxy Port for the HTTP Proxy. For access to servers that
are inside the firewall, you can specify a list of domain names that will
not require going through the firewall with the field No Proxy for
Domains beginning with. You do not need to restart OC4J for the new
settings to take effect. Click on Help link there to get more information.
If you want your portlet content cached using invalidation-based caching, an Oracle Web Cache instance must be configured in front of your provider. For more information on how to set this up, see Setting up the Invalidation Caching Sample.
After you set up and start the Web Cache instance, register the Web Clipping Provider as usual, but set the URL host name and port number to point to the Web Cache instance instead. For example,
http://<cache_instance_name>:<cache_port>/portalTools/webClipping/providers/webClipping
When a Web Clipping portlet definition is altered either though an Edit Defaults or Customize page, the provider generates a request that invalidates and removes the portlet content from the cache. The invalidation request is sent to the invalidation port of the Web Cache instance.
The invalidation port is defined by the cache.xml configuration file (a template copy can be found under pdk/portalTools/conf/portal/conf directory). To specify the port, modify the configuration file as indicated by italicized entries shown in the following example:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<webcache>
<invalidation
host="cache.us.oracle.com"
port="4001"
authorization="invalidator:invalidator"/>
</webcache>
The provider locates the cache.xml file using one of the following methods:
If the Web Cache Invalidation setting is not configured properly, Web Cache will continue to return stale content that no longer reflects the portlet definition. To fix this, check the application.log file for these errors (refer to the Troubleshooting section below for its location):
See the Troubleshooting section below for the location of the application.log file. For additional Web Cache troubleshooting tips, see Setting up the Invalidation Caching Sample.
The Web Clipping Provider can use Oracle Advanced Security Option (ASO) to secure and encrypt the channel between itself (at the Middle-Tier) and the database which hosts the Web Clipping Repository. Because ASO is a feature available only on Oracle 9i DB Enterpriese Edition, or as an add-on option to the Standard Edition, this feature is not turned on by default. To turn it on, you can go to the Edit Provider page from the Test Page, by clicking on the Edit link next to the status of the Web Clipping Repository. Then while editing the Repository Settings, enable ASO.
Note: When a change like this happens after the initial configuration (where the database parameters are already set up), the database connections are assumed to be already open. Since enabling ASO affects all connections made to the database, it is advisable to restart the OC4J instance containing the Web Clipping Provider to reset all the current connections to now use ASO. The same logic applies for the opposite direction.
The Web Clipping Provider can access data through HTTPS URLs. To access these URLs, the Web Clipping Provider needs access to njssl9.dll (for Windows®) or libnjssl9.so (for Unix). For providers running on Windows®, njssl9.dll must be present in a folder defined in the PATH environment variable. For Unix systems, libnjssl9.so file must be found in the folder defined in LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.
You can typically find this library and copy it from the $IAS_HOME/bin directory in an OracleAS installation. After copying, you must restart OC4J.
After everything is configured correctly for the Web Clipping Provider, you'll need to register the Web Clipping Provider as a Portlet Provider into your instance of Portal in the same way that you used to register Providers.
Fill out the provider information for the Web Clipping Provider:
| Name | webClipping |
| Display Name | Web Clipping Provider |
| Timeout | Specify something realistic based on your understanding of how you are connected to the Web sites you want to clip. If they are all within your corporate firewall, you can set a small value like 30 seconds, otherwise, a 60 or 90 seconds timeout will most likely be sufficient. |
| Implementation | Web |
| URL | http://{server}:{port}/portalTools/webClipping/providers/webClipping |
| User's Identity | Select the radio button with "The user has the same identity in the Web providers application as in the Single Sign-On identity." |
| User/Session Information | Select the radio button "User", to send user specific information to the Provider. |
| Login Frequency | Once per user session |
| Require Proxy | Depends on your deployment of your PDK versus your Oracle Portal instance |
Click Finish.
Note: When registering a new provider with Oracle Portal, only the user who registered the provider has privileges to see the provider/portlets. If necessary, go to the Folder with the name of the provider within the Portlet Repository content area and update the provider privileges as required.
You can view errors that occur when bringing up the Test Page:
You can view errors that occur during the execution of the Web Clipping Portlet:
Errors that can occur during Configuration of the Web Clipping Provider are listed as follows:
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