OracleAS Portlet Developer Kit (PDK)
Installing the Portal Tools

Contents

Introduction
Contents of pdk software archive
Deploying the Portal Tools Application
Configuring and Registering the portlet producers under Portal Tools
Advanced Portal Tools Configurations

Introduction

Note: Starting with PDK 9.0.4.1.0, the PDK download is intended to be installed and deployed in a standalone OC4J instance only. If you plan to use PDK in an Oracle Application Server instance, you must get and install the corresponding Oracle Application Server releases or patchsets.

Portal Tools is a collection of standards-based and PDK-Java portlets. By using Portal Tools, your business users can easily combine any Web content and publish data from a variety of data sources to an Oracle Portal or Oracle WebCenter application.

This download includes the following Portal Tools:

• Web Clipping enables content reuse and aggregation. Using Web Clipping, business users can clip page content from an existing Web site and deliver it as a portlet.

• OmniPortlet provides wizards that enable knowledge workers to publish SQL, XML, Web Service, Spreadsheet, and existing Web page data directly to an Oracle Portal or Oracle WebCenter page.

• Rich Text Portlet offers browser-based, rich text editing at runtime. It allows users to author and publish formatted HTML as portlets. The Rich Text portlet is a useful tool for blogging or for posting enterprise announcements and news items.

This document contains installation and configuration information on the Portal Tools, and explains how to:

• Install and configure the standalone OC4J Server needed to run the Portal Tools. (OC4J stands for "OracleAS Containers for J2EE". For more information about OC4J, refer to the Oracle Technology Network.)

• Register the portlet producers with an Oracle Portal or Oracle WebCenter instance.

• Use the portlets contained by the preconfigured portlet producers.

If you are upgrading from a version of Portal Tools prior to 10.1.2.0.2, please see the upgrading.portaltools.html article in the portalTools directory. 

Please consult the release notes for an up-to-date list of new features of Portal Tools.

Contents of pdk software archive

Portal Tools is part of the OracleAS Portlet Developer Kit (PDK). To install it, first unzip the pdk software archive file into a directory located on the same machine where OC4J is installed. (These instructions will from now on refer to this directory as $unzip_directory.) Unzipping pdk software archive to the $unzip_directory creates the following directory structure: 

• $unzip_directory
  • pdk
• jpdk
• portalTools
• portlet-container

Contents of portalTools Directory

The portalTools directory is created under $unzip_directory/pdk and contains all the files required by the Portal Tools. The following files are included in this directory:

• portalTools.ear: The enterprise archive file for Portal Tools PDK-Java portal producers.
• installing.portaltools.html: Instructions for installing the Portal Tools (this document).
• portaltools.release.notes.html: Release notes describing known issues in the current release.
• upgrading.portaltools.html: Instructions for upgrading to the current release.

Deploying the PDK-Java portlet producers

1. The PDK installer tools installs and configures the necessary shared libraries and configuration files for Portal Tools. It's use is described in the main PDK-Java installation document.
2. Start up the OC4J server again as a background process with the following commands
   • In Windows Command Prompt:
     set OC4J_JVM_ARGS=-server -Xmx512m
     set ORACLE_HOME=<$unzip_directory>
     set JAVA_HOME=<path to java installation>
     %ORACLE_HOME%\bin\oc4j -start
   • In Unix/Linux Bourne Shell (sh):
     setenv OC4J_JVM_ARGS "-server -Xmx512m"
     setenv ORACLE_HOME <$unzip_directory>
     setenv JAVA_HOME <path to java installation>
     $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oc4j -start

   Note: the -Xmx512m option specifies a 'maximum heap size' of 512 Megabytes for the OC4J process, which is the recommended setting. However, you may raise or lower this setting to suit your application. If you encounter java.lang.OutOfMemoryError exceptions, you should raise this setting.

3. Deploy the sample enterprise application in $unzip_directory/pdk/portalTools/portalTools.ear using Enterprise Manager

• Invoke Oracle Enterprise Manager using your browser and log in. For example:
  • http://your.host.com:<port>/em
• Go to the Applications tab and press the 'Deploy' button.
• Choose the portalTools.ear file to deploy. Use the first option in the Archive section to upload the file from $unzip_directory/pdk/portalTools/portalTools.ear .
• Press the Next button to get to the 'Deploy: Application Attributes' page. Enter an application name, e.g. portalTools. The context root for each of the web modules may be changed at this point if required.
• Press 'Next' to get to the 'Deployment Settings' page and then 'Deploy'.

Configuring and Registering the PDK-Java Portlet Producers of Portal Tools

Now that Portal Tools is deployed, you should proceed to configure the individual portal producers before registering them with an OracleAS Portal instance or Oracle WebCenter application.  This can be done from the Portal Tools home page at the following URL:

http://<server>:<port>/portalTools

The home page lists the PDK-Java producers under Portal Tools. Further details on configuring the Portal Tools PDK-Java portlet producer applications can be found in the following sections of the Oracle WebCenter Framework Developer's Guide.

• Creating Portlets with OmniPortlet
• Creating Content-Based Portlets with Web Clipping

Deploying the Rich Text Portlet Application

The Rich Text Portlet is a JSR 168 portlet application which runs on a portlet container. If deployed to Oracle's portlet container, it is exposed through WSRP. The steps to install it are:

1. The JPS portlet container needs to be installed according to the instructions in the portlet container installation document.
2. Restart OC4J if necessary.
3. Install the richtextportlet.ear application file using the console (as described earlier) with the context root richtextportlet and a suitable application name.
4. The test page for the Rich Text Portlet can now be found at the url:

   http://<server>:<port>/richtextportlet/info

   Follow either of the two WSDL links at the bottom of the page to register the portlet producer with Oracle WebCenter applications. Use the WSRP 1.0 URL when registering with Oracle Portal.