Oracle Applications Capability

India Delivery Center

Oracle Application Server – Portal Concepts

By Gopinath Ganesan
Contents

• Oracle 9iAS Portal Introduction and Key benefits

• 9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2.0) Features
• Portal Architecture
• Portal Security
• Application Components in Portal
• Portal Export - Import
• Integration with other components.
Oracle 9iAS Portal -
Introduction and Key benefits
Introduction
9iAS Portal
• Tool to develop wizard driven enterprise portals.
Oracle 9iAS Portal Version Upgrades
• The major versions of Portal are represented below to show
the upgrade paths :
Key Benefits
• Controls intranet and extranet sites with the single point browser
support.
• Develop custom portlets with J2EE and web services.
• Monitor user authentication using single sign on (SSO) concept.
• Enabled the facility of publish and expiry date concept for the items in
the portal.
• Provides in built web server (Apache) for the HTTP request of web
pages.
• The whole portal application resides on the Oracle DB (Default
database) in Oracle 9iAS hence avoids the explicit DB connectivity.
• Multilingual support for the text in the portal application to the extent of
27 languages.
• Enabling the wireless support as PDK (Portal Develpoment Kit ) has
enabled the coded portlets to respond to the mobile request.
• Oracle 9ias Integration server is used as the 3 rd party interface to
integrate the the applications such as SAP,Peoplesoft,MQ series,
Oracle Applications,J2EE Application.
9iAS Portal Release 2 - 9.0.2.0 Features
• Productive J2EE development.
• Enhanced Mobile support.
• Integration of Java components like Java servlets ,JSP,EJB.
• Unbreakable security :
5. Using JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization server)
6. HTTP-S
7. Support for PKI (Public key infrastructure authentication)
• Information's stored in central repository so administrators can
manage and revoke privileges using browser.
• Synchronize applications ,data, services in one singe oracle 9iAS
server.
Portal Architecture - 9.0.2.0
Application Architecture

Mod_oc4j PPE
Client
OC4J Container

Mod_plsql
Web Provider

Portal Repository
DB Provider
Process Flow of Application Architecture

HTTP Request

HTTP Server

Mod_PLSQL
Mod_oc4j
DB Provider
PPE / Portal Cache

Web Provider

HTTP Response
Technical Architecture
Client Machine

Web Cache

Portal Middle Tier SSO Middle Tier

HTTP server
Mod_plsql SSO Server
Mod_oc4j OID 9.0.2
PPE
9iAS Infrastructure

Portal Repository
Roles of each component
• HTTP request goes to Web Cache & it acts as the replica of 9iAS .
• Portal Cache manages requests rates ,stores the content and gets it form Cache.
• Mod_oc4j routes the request from HTTP server  oc4j Maintains the same in oc4j
instance .Manages the request by Load Balancing Algorithm.
• PPE Parallel Page Engine is a Java servlet retrieves the page from portal repository &
assembles pages.
• Portal DB server is a Database server will be a custom database for the entire
application.
• SSO & OID is the authentication mode for 9iAS 9.0.2 which manage & authenticates
user/pass for Applications like:
Partner Application  Application which uses the 9iAS Portal SSO authentication mode
e.g. Custom build Portal application .
External Application  Application which uses its own authentication mode where in its
user / pass stored in ORASSO_PS schema in SSO DB.
e. g Integrating External applications like Yahoo mail to the portal which routes the
entries to the yahoo authentication.
Portal Security

4
Client Session
HTTP Req HTTP server
SSO Server Cookie

1 3
2

Validates Entry
In OID 5
7
Privileges

Mod_oc4j
6
8

Portal Repository Web cache

9

HTTP Response
Process Flow of Security Architecture

1. Client places the HTTP Request for a Portal Page from the browser i.e., the Single Sign
On Page with User/Pass as Entry Parameter.
2&3 Goes to SSO Server & Validates the corresponding entry in the OID - Oracle Internet
Directory & Returns back to SSO Server.
Check for Entry in OID :
If Valid Entry exists then
4. Session cookie is created for the valid portal user.
5. Checks for the privileges to acess the portal page.
6. Gets the relevant information from Portal Repository.
7. Passes through mod_oc4j & Parallel Page Engine for page assembling.
8. Stores the content in the Web Cache.
9. HTTP response is obtained.
Else
Invalid Portal User  Redirects back to SSO Page.
End.
Portal Application Components
• Page Groups
• Providers
• Database Objects

Page Groups
• Page groups define a user environment that includes pages and their associated
supporting objects. It makes the contents accessible for the user .A Page Group may
contain many pages .The major classifications in page groups are as follows:
Pages  Hierarchical structure of Pages :

Pages

Regions

Portlets

Items
Simple File
URL
Text
Image
Login/Logout Link
Templates
• Standard format for the page which includes common header/footer image ,background
for the whole portal application. Defining a generic template can be utilized for the whole
application.
Categories
• Enables the portal search with in the application e.g. Registering a category called
“Sentinel” which makes the corresponding search in Portal Repository.
Navigation Pages
• Defining a navigation bar for the whole portal application which has got links routed to the
respective locations of the page. In built items like Home, Help will be available for
common users others will be accessible only for privileged users.
Style
• In corporating style guidelines like background color, Font Size/Name which take cares of
generic look and feel of the portal application.
Items
Adding customized items to the pages which includes :
Simple File  Any simple text file .
Image Map  Mapping a single image and adding to a page.
PL/SQL  Dynamic PL/SQL items which interacts with the Database.
Page Link  Linking the pages of the same page group internally.
Text  Simple text content.
URL  URL item which opens another external application or web page.
Providers
• Providers are the components which publishes the portal pages to the end users this can
be further classified into 2 types :
Web Providers
DB Providers

Web Providers
• Web provider enables to publish the external web application to be incorporated into
the existing portal page.
e.g. Integration of J2EE component to Portal like JSP/ Java Servlet/EJB Application .
DB Providers
DB Providers are the database providers which serves as the easy browser based & DB
driven custom build tool for developing the following applications like :

Forms  Building Master/Detail Forms and Customized forms for Data Entry.
Reports  Building Reports based on Wizard/SQL Query .
Links  Building Links either to Portal /External Applications.
Menu  A collection of related links form a Menu.
Charts  Building graphical charts like Bar charts, PIE charts for statistical
comparisons .
Dynamic Pages  Building Dynamic HTML Pages .
URL Item  Building URL item to a portlet.
Database Objects
Database objects includes all the objects in the oracle database and accessible and
managed from the browser like:
• Tables
• Views
• Synonyms
• Index
• Procedures
• Functions
• Packages
• Triggers
Portal Export - Import
• Oracle9iAS Portal includes export-import tools to migrate page group and database
provider objects from one instance to another.

• Using export-import functionality, users can develop content on a development server,

push the content on production servers.

Note :
Portal supports export and import between Portal instances of the same release
only not between two different releases of Portal
e.g. Export / Import from Oracle 9iAS portal 9.0.2.0  9.0.2.0 (Possible)
Export / Import from Oracle 9iAS portal 9.0.2.0  9.0.2.3 (Not Possible)

The following Portal objects are available for Export / Import via UI
 Export / Import via UI

Page Groups- Objects Portal DB Providers - Objects

Page Group Portal DB Provider

Page Form
Category Report
Template Chart
Style Menu
Navigation Page Link

Availability
Various options of having Production & Training Servers[ Operation Box]
• Independent Server Model.
• Clustering instances between each server.
• Separate installation & Linking.
• Single Server Installation.
Integration with other components
• Oracle 9iAS Portal enables the integrations to the other componenents using Oracle 9iAS
Integration Server .

• Using rich services of PDK – Portal Development Kit , you can create the custom
connectors to the 3rd party applications or datasources.
• The Oracle9iAS Portal Developer Kit (PDK) is the highly-productive framework for
extending and integrating into Oracle9iAS Portal .
• List of Components which can be integrated to 9iAS Portal :
1) J2EE Applications
2) Oracle 11i Applications.
3) SAP
4) People soft
5) MQ – Series
• As part of Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (release 11.5.6 and later), pre-built portlets that
enable direct access to application data from the portal are available. All of these portlets
are integrated to take advantage of Single Sign-On as a partner application .
• Any external content management system can be integrated through portlets, as long as it
publishes its content as HTML or XML/XSLT, and delivers it over HTTP.
Installed Components of 9iAS
List of Products gets installed on Oracle 9iAS Installation
Oracle 9iAS Infrastructure
• SSO Server – OID 9.0.2
• Metadata Repository
• Oracle 9i DB

Oracle 9iAS Portal & Wireless

• 9iAS Portal 9.0.2.0
• J2EE and Web Cache
• HTTP Server ( Default  Apache Web server)
• Technical Information on Oracle9iAS Portal

http://metalink.oracle.com
http://portalstudio.oracle.com
http://otn.oracle.com