The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal

Inside this issue...

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the latest installment of The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

XMLACCESS 101: Learn to move an entire Portal configuration to a different environment
Day-to-day WebSphere Portal administration tasks that involve adding and modifying Portal resources such as pages, portlets, access control, themes, and skins can be very repetitive, time consuming, and potentially error-prone.

Configuring WCM Search when using Virtual Portals in WebSphere Portal V6
Starting with WebSphere Portal V6, the Portal server comes packaged with a search engine called "Portal Search" is an integrated solution for crawling, searching, and displaying search results of Workplace Content Management (WCM) content. WCM is a tool that comes bundled with Portal (though licensed separately) and allows WCM developers to author portal content without programming. Best of all, using Portal Search, WCM developers can implement many search scenarios using nothing more than the WCM Search component, simple JavaServer Pages (JSP) pages, and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) programming.

Inside the last issue...

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the latest installment of The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

How to enable security in WebSphere Portal V5.1.0.x directly with SSL
This article documents a technique the Ascendant team discovered (during our countless Portal implementations) that works around the block that WebSphere Portal V5.1.0.x imposes, which prevents you from enabling security directly to an SSL-enabled LDAP repository. We were able to configure Portal security with SSL LDAPs without having to enable the non-SSL port of these servers, maintaining the current security policies in place. After reading this article, you’ll be able to benefit from this technique, too.

Lotusphere 2007: We still bleed yellow
This was my fourth time attending Lotusphere. Arguably, this year had the biggest Lotusphere turnout ever. The show had its trademark features and showcased new products and solutions. I learned everything that is going on with Lotus software, heard plenty of good news, met my peers, exchanged ideas, and realized that many people out there still bleed yellow.

Lotusphere — from the red and swollen eyes of a sales monkey
These are the rantings of a sales monkey following the Lotusphere 2007 event. I’ve maintained an uninterrupted string of return trips to the spacious surroundings of Mickey’s Lotus lovefest for the past 13 years or so. During those years, I have seen the event change (evolve, devolve, and resurrect). This year, IBM has gotten it right; the “Vision” is definitely there. The old energy is back.

Issue Number Five

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the latest installment of The Spheree-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

Configuring multiple security realms in WebSphere Portal 5.1
This article introduces administrators to the new multiple security realms feature, which allows for the possibility of exclusive security permissions for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) user groups, as well as better isolation between non-related LDAP groups and their virtual portals (another new feature in WPS 5.1).

Create and deploy an authoring tool that allows users to edit WCM content inline
In WCM V6, content creators and approvers can use inline editing via an authoring tool that provides quick access to a content item by linking directly to the Authoring portlet. This article introduces the new authoring tool feature and provides the basics for developers to create and deploy an authoring tool.

Discover how to create and manage content with the enhanced WCM V6 Authoring portlet and templates
This article shows some of the most useful authoring-specific enhancements in WCM 6, like the improved Authoring portlet and templates. You’ll learn how these enhancements can streamline the process of creating and managing content for content creators and approvers, and how developers can implement them

Issue Number Four

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the latest installment of The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

17 tips for implementing WebSphere Portal in a cluster
Building a WebSphere Portal cluster is a complicated process, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a difficult one. This article highlights some of the things administrators should keep in mind when building their first clustered environment to assure a smooth implementation.

Create a complete portal by extending legacy RPG and COBOL applications
This article aims to bridge the divide by providing high-level information regarding iSeries integration in terms that both traditional RPG and COBOL programmers and Web developers can understand. We’ll show how to extend legacy applications to the Internet by following a roadmap developed by IBM. This roadmap provides the blueprint for developers to provide access to these legacy applications from Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and WebSphere Portal applications.

Using a resource reference to look up data sources in WebSphere Application Server 6.0 and higher
In this article, I’ll show application developers and WebSphere administrators how to use resource references to look up data sources and other managed resources, so valuable server resources are not wasted logging useless messages.

Issue Number Three

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the third installment of The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

Tips for getting started with WebSphere Portal and Workplace Web Content Management
When companies start their implementation of WebSphere Portal and Workplace Web Content Management (WCM), it’s important that the IT departments understand how to use the technology and how it will affect them. Whether you are a developer, an administrator, or an architect, this article offers implementation tips and my preferred approach to adopting WebSphere Portal and WCM. I recommend starting with a baseline architecture and then building a vertical slice that represents a single business process of reasonable (mid-level) complexity.

Create a fully functional consumer model for a portlet using Workplace Dashboard Framework builders
In last month’s newsletter, I introduced you to WebSphere Portlet Factory and the Workplace Dashboard Framework and described the builders required to create a provider model that publishes (or exposes) common data to other models. This article introduces the builders required to create a consumer model (also called a presentation model), which consumes the common data from the provider model and provides output as appropriate. I’ll walk through the development process from consumer model to portlet.

Service connectivity: An entry point to service-oriented architecture (SOA)
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is becoming an important force in today’s IT industry. While there are numerous writings on the many benefits of a functional SOA environment, there is not a lot of material on how to plan an evolutionary approach to adopting SOA. This article helps both enterprise architects and application developers understand how to migrate toward SOA by making incremental improvements in the IT environment.

Issue Number Two

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the second installment of The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

Pre-rendering an IBM Workplace Web Content Management site to static HTML
When implementing an IBM Workplace Web Content Management (WCM) solution, most companies think of the WCM engine as a component of the production runtime environment. However, there are several situations where this is not necessary. In this article, we’ll look at how to configure WCM to pre-render a site and what WCM’s pre-rendering engine produces as output.

Create portlets faster using the WebSphere Portlet Factory out-of-the-box builders
Many WebSphere Portal customers are looking for ways to minimize the time it takes to create portlets. WebSphere Portlet Factory is the IBM-provided solution. This rapid application development tool speeds the process of developing and deploying portlets. This article explains how WebSphere Portlet Factory accelerates development and introduces the model and builder components, which are wizard-like mechanisms that automate code creation.

Scripting to ease WebSphere Portal deployments (part 2)
This month’s article focuses on the portal-scripting interface (the wpscript tool), which is also driven by Jacl and that targets WebSphere Portal rather than WebSphere Application Server. In addition, I’ll discuss some other technologies that can aid in automating your server configurations.

Issue Number One

Letter from the editor
Welcome to the initial installment of The Sphere e-Newsletter on Portal! My name is Michael Fromin, and I am the Director of Education and Training for Ascendant Technology (http://www.ATech.com).

Delivering personalized Web content with IBM Workplace Web Content Management (part 1)
Learn how to deliver personalized content with IBM Workplace Web Content Management (WCM). While focusing on configuration, security, management, and steps for implementing profiling, this article introduces the Workplace WCM profiling features and shows how — without programming — developers can deliver a simple personalized Web site or content portlet.

Automatically deploying portlets to a test server in RAD 6
Deploy your portlet applications to a test server without leaving the comfort of your IDE. In this article, we investigate functionality in RAD 6 that helps speed up your portlet development and testing cycles.

Scripting to ease WebSphere Portal deployments, Part 1
Minimize deployment errors using the WebSphere Portal 5.0 scripting tool wsadmin. When creating a WebSphere Portal solution, developers are often tempted to write the code, test it, and hand off a multipage document (outlining the deployment steps) to a WebSphere administrator. Creating a document with several steps is tempting because it is easy (for the developer); however, there is a risk that these manual steps will be skipped or performed incorrectly, and there is a repeated cost for each new environment that the application will be deployed to.

There is a solution! Since WebSphere 5.0, a tool named wsadmin helps automate the tasks related specifically to the appserver. This month’s article covers the wsadmin tool.

Tech tips...

• Changing the Administrators Group in IBM Workplace Web Content Management (IWWCM)
  Starting with WebSphere Portal 5.0.2.x, IBM has provided WebSphere Portal customers with an integrated, robust Web content management solution called IBM Workplace Web Content Management (IWWCM).
  
  
• Installing WebSphere Portal 5.1.x on Solaris
  While many people think of WebSphere Portal as a single product, it’s important (from a technical perspective) to understand that WebSphere Portal itself is a large J2EE application that runs on top of WebSphere Application Server (WAS) and WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation (WBISF) Edition.