Portals School: Destination for information on Websphere Portal Server, JSR168 Portlets & WCM

Mobile Portal Accelerator

2011-10-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

Just got a chance to evaluate Mobile Portal Accelerator a accelerator provided by IBM to ease development of portlets for mobile devices. It sits on top of WebSphere Portal Server with a toolkit for RAD or RSA to develop mobile portlets. It extends the capabilities of WebSPhere Portal Server to limitless of mobile devices.
Some unique points of MPA are listed below:

Supports 9000 mobile devices. include Android, Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, RIM BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile and Nokia Symbian-based devices.

Supports almost all the browsers supported by WebSphere Portal. Support for IE 6.0 +, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Apple Safari and many more.

Support for JSR 168 and 286 portlet specification.

A uniquly provided subscription of MPA update will provide support for all the new devices introduced in the market.

So if anyone interesed ot looking for a tool to develop mobile portlets using WebSphere Portal environment can surely go for this accelerator. It requires WebSphere Portal, WAS and RAD or RSA. Evaluation versions are already out for MPA 6.0 and 7.0. So you can download then and start evaluating the software. Sample portlets are alredy provided. I have the toolkit evaluation version with me will try to attach them for the benefit.

How to enable WCM on local development environment!!!

2010-05-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

To enable WCM on local development environment below are the steps:

1) Stop portal server
2) From command prompt go to Portal_Home/config.
In my system Portal_Home is C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer
3) Run Command WPSconfig.bat configure-wcm-authoring -DPortalAdminPwd=password.

Test LOT-959: IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1 Application Development

2010-04-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Objectives

Architecting a Portal Solution

1. Demonstrate familiarity WebSphere Portal Web 2.0 features

2. Demonstrate knowledge of WebSphere Portal Platform features

3. Identify portal dependencies on existing software

4. Identify supported portlet frameworks

5. Identifying scope for custom portlets

6. Know the authentication levels provided by WebSphere Portal

7. Understand how portal features and portlets use user identity to personalize

8. Understand patterns and methods for application integration with WebSphere Portal

9. Understand portal page aggregation modes

10. Use out-of-the-box portlets

Install, Setup and Configuration of a Developer Environment

1. Compile, packaging, and deploying portal artifacts using Rational Application Developer

2. Configuring Rational Application Developer for remote testing and debugging with WebSphere Portal

3. Create portlets in Rational Application Developer and WebSphere Portlet Factory

4. Creating Portal projects in Rational Application Developer

5. Diagnose problems with development environment installation

6. Identify Software Requirements

7. Optimize development environment

8. Understand software prerequisites (including compatibility questions)

Portlet Development

1. Create cooperative portlets using Click-2-Action and Property Broker

2. Demonstrate knowledge of core Java Portlet Objects

3. Demonstrate the differences between, events, render parameters, public render parameter, and scoped attributes; request, session, shared session, and application scope.

4. Describe the portlet life cycle for JSR-168 and JSR-286

5. Effectively use JSP and JSTL to render portlet markup

6. Have knowledge of WSRP for JSR-168 and JSR-286 portlets

7. Identify supported portlet modes and custom portlet modes

8. Implement portlet actions and events with Java 5 annotations

9. Understand portlet descriptor files for each portlet type and utilize WebSphere Portal extend features

10. Understand WebSphere Portal client side portlet API

11. Use AJAX to update state and trigger actions with JSR-286 portlets

12. Use Remember Me API to provide anonymous portlet content personalization

13. Utilize client profile information (JSR-188)

14. Utilize of standard portlet cascading style-sheet classes

Theme Development

1. Demonstrate understanding of Theme Extensions

2. Develop custom themes, skins and screens

3. Identify Portal and Drag-and-Drop JSP tags

4. Implement Client Side Aggregation

5. Implementing Portal Navigation

6. Portal Cascading Style-sheet classes

7. Using Theme Customizer Portlet to modify a theme

8. Using theme policies and custom page settings

Portal Frameworks and Portlet Services

1. Creating a custom Portlet Service

2. Develop Login, Logout, and Session validation filters

3. Parsing ATOM Feeds

4. Understand key Service Providers (SPI) and Application Programing Interfaces (API)

1. Login Service SPI

2. Portal User Management SPI

3. Portal Write Model SPI

4. Property Broker SPI

5. Resource Addressability Framework (SPI)

6. Step Up Authentication SPI

5. Use REST protocol to access SPI's

Testing, Debugging and Performance Monitoring of Portlets

1. Debug a portlet on a local server

2. Debug a portlet using WebSphere Portal remote

3. Effective use of logging

4. Running code profiling in Rational Application Developer

5. Troubleshoot portlet applications

6. Using portlet PMI statics

Additional Development Concepts

1. Assembling Composite Application Templates

2. Collaboration API

3. Creating custom portal search interfaces

4. Developing Personalization Resources

5. Have knowledge of Portlet Bridge Frameworks; Struts, JavaServer Faces, etc.

6. Search the Business Solutions catalog

7. Using and extending the Credential Vault

8. Using Web Content Management API's

9. Writing Personalization and Visibility Rules

Working with Locks in IBM Lotus Web Content Management !!!

2010-03-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

As authors contribute content, they might find items that are locked by other
users, because either they are being edited by another user or a draft item has been created.

When a user is editing an item, the item is locked to other users. This means other users
are unable to edit the item until the current user closes the item that they are editing. A
lock symbol is displayed against items that are currently locked.
Administrators can lock and unlock items by selecting them and clicking either the Lock
or Unlock button.
The locking of sites, site areas, taxonomies, and categories is configurable and
is not enabled by default. When locking is enabled, authors cannot create any children
under the locked site or site area. This only applies to items that are located one level
below a locked parent.
When a new draft of a published item is created, a check mark is displayed next to the
published item indicating that no other user can create a draft until the current draft
progresses through a workflow and its state changes to published.

Library Versioning in IBM Lotus Web Content Management!!!!

2010-03-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

With library versioning, administrators can group the items within a library by label or
date and time.
If something goes wrong, the administrators can go back to a previous version,
selected by date or label.
A library cannot be restored while any items are currently locked or checked out
by users. Before restoring a library, you must view all published items in a library and
unlock any items marked as checked out or locked.

Item Versioning in IBM Lotus Web Content Management !!!!

2010-03-16T05:12:00.000-07:00

Lotus Web Content Management a versioning systems with which authors, designers,
and administrators can track the changes that have been made to specific items or to an
entire library, identify versions of libraries by date or tag, and restore them in the future.

Following options are available to define when an item should be versioned.

Manual : A version action can be added to a workflow stage to create a new version
when entering or exiting the workflow stage.
A version action in a draft stage will not trigger versioning, since a draft
cannot have versions.
It is possible to create only one version of the item in a stage.
Always : A version of an item is created each time you save an item, or, if the item is
participating in a workflow, each time the item's state changes to published.
Never: Versioning is never used.

Rich Text component in WCM !!

2010-01-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

The Rich Text component is very similar to the text component. Rich Text components can reference one or more components using tags and also provide a Rich Text editor for formattinf text and HTML. The Rich Text component references the form and its components
(design, buttons, and so forth).

Text Component in WCM !!

2010-01-27T10:18:00.000-08:00

You can use text components to store text or HTML .

Web Content Management applet failed to load or is unavailable!!

2010-01-11T01:15:00.000-08:00

I was working with WCM and receive an alert while creating a new Authoring Template with error message "The Web Content Management applet failed to load or is unavailable. Please contact your administrator immediately."

The solution is Check your installed JRE:
The Web Content Management Authoring Portlet requires one of the following JREs to be installed:

JRE 1.4.1_07,
JRE 1.4.2_03,
JRE 1.4.2_04.
JRE 1.4.2_05.

It worked with 1.4.2_07 for me.

When you are working in Web content management system. Firstly check (JAVA)JRE in your system. if (JAVA)JRE install then update (JAVA)JRE . and no (*JAVA)JRE* install, so Please install (JAVA)JRE in your System.

Understand and Know the steps to create Site & Site Area in Lotus Web Content Management!!

2009-10-24T02:01:00.000-07:00

A Site Framework reflects the structure of your website. It provides you complete information about your website's navigation, menu components and the complete structure. The Site framework consists of Site and Site Areas where Site is the parent for Site Area.

Site : A site consist of several site areas. Hence it is the parent for the site area. You can manage several sites in Web Content Management with one site equals to one WebSite. The Site also define relationships between authoring and presentation template.

Site Area : A site area is the place where contents are grouped together. For every site area we need to define a default content which will be viewed when the page is open. If no default content is mapped the browser will not be able to open that page.

Below are the steps to create a Site:

Click on New and Select Site
Fill the required Site name as Portal School, description and then click on save.

Now in order to create Site Area follow below steps

Click on New button
Select Site Area ( same way the Site was selected)
It will show the list of all available Sites. Select Portal School as the Parent Site for this Site Area.
Click OK
In name field enter Lotus Web Content Management
In Display field also enter Lotus Web Content Management
Give description as contains all information regarding lotus web content management.
Check Type will be Site Area
Click Save.

By repeating above steps you can create as many site areas under site Portal School

You can see the newly created Site and Site Area under navigational hierarchy as shown below.

You can always change the position of Site Areas as and when required.

Know how to select existing Library for use in Lotus Web Content Management!!

2009-10-24T01:00:00.000-07:00

In order to work with library in WCM first we need to select that library for use in WCM. Follow following steps to select library for WCM

Go to Web Content Management Authoring screen and then click configure.
Choose Library Selection
Add Portal School as shown in below figure.
Click OK

It must be known that deleting any library results in deletion of all its content.

Know how to create a new Library in Lotus Web Content Management!!

2009-10-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

Library acts as a distinction between different projects or used as a separator between content and components. Only an administrator can create a new library.

In order to create a new library login into your portal as an administrator:

1) Go to Portal Content
2) Navigate to Web Content libraries
3) Click on Create new Library and input the library name as Portal School and description as Destination for information on Websphere Portal Server, JSR168 Portlets & WCM and language as english. Refer the below screen shot for your reference.
4) Click OK.

Now we need to configure this newly created library for use in WCM. Refer my next post to do so which explains the steps to configure the library.

Understanding Syndication in Lotus Web Content Management.

2009-10-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

WCM offers you syndication to replicate data from one WCM location to another. When creating a syndication process, Lotus WCM allows you two choices for your items to be syndicated:

All Items : This setting will allow you to replicate all elements from one location to another including draft and expired content. This setting is common when syndicating between distributed authoring locations or between an authoring location and a development location.
All Live Items : This setting only replicates Live Content or the content which is not expired. Live content should be approved content. This setting is useful for production because it only requires live content.

Syndication always syndicates copies of your technical assets (for example, presentation templates, authoring templates, library components, and so forth).

Understanding Workflow in Lotus Web Content Managment.

2009-10-20T01:04:00.000-07:00

A content before getting published on the website should follow approval process. Lotus Web Content Management offers workflow to approve and authorize content before getting submitted on to website. You need to create at least two stages, Draft and Published, inside a workflow. The
workflow approves the content quality and assures that content is published in an organization policy manner.
Following are the recommended stages in workflow :

Draft
Approval
Published
Archieved

Every stage is logged inside a content history that makes traceability easier.

Understanding role of Authoring Templates in IBM Lotus Web Content Management.

2009-10-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

In Lotus Web Content Management, content is created by using authoring templates. These templates are forms that contain content and can be grouped into different document types. When it comes to defining the required document types, it is common to hear content owners requesting a document type for every propose. For example, the sales team wants a document type for products, human resources wants document types for career information, and marketing sees a need for a document type for news and company information. From a technical perspective, these requirements fit in fewer authoring templates because they are quite similar essentially.
Instead of creating a new template for every document type on the Web site, templates can differ by page design, such as page layout, page style, and components. Then, you can apply these templates to the many content document types that you create so that the content propose is separated from its layout, making content and presentation flexible. Proper construction of the shell site ensures maximum reuse, flexibility, and performance.

Key Components of IBM Lotus Web Content Management.

2009-10-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

IBM Lotus Web Content management is fully integrated with the WebSphere Portal 6.1. Following are the key components of WCM:

IBM Lotus Web Content Management Server : All request for content are processed by the content server. The content server influences Virtual Member Manager as its user repository for autentication and group membership.

IBM Lotus Web Content Management Content Repository : WCM uses WebSphere Portal’s embedded Apache Derby database as its content repository. But if required you can switch to other supported databases. You can find the list of supported databases at As this list of supported databases is subject to change, refer to the WebSphere Portal 6.1 Information Center for details on the latest supported versions and platforms, which is available at:

IBM Lotus Web Content Management Authoring Portlet : The Authoring Portlet provides you the graphical user interface for interacting with IBM Lotus Web Content Management™. Content creators use the portlet to author content. Content approvers use this same portlet for managing content.Developers use this portlet to create technical assets (for example, Presentation Templates, Workflows, Syndication components, and so forth). The Authoring Portlet allows for very granular user interface security controls.

IBM Lotus Web Content Management Connect Servlet : The Connect Servlet is used to fetch content outside the Portal env. Visior can request a content directly from the Connect Servlet.

IBM Lotus Web Content Management Rendering Portlets : IBM WCM provides two portlets to show your content on Websphere Portal:

1) Local Rendering Portlet: This portlet is used to show content locally on the portal server where the instance of WCM is also live. Hence this portlet can only be used to show content when deployed on Websphere Portal Server which also has WCM running on it.

2) Remote Rendering Portlet: This portlet is used to show content on portal other then instance where IBM WCM is installed. Hence it uses an HTTP connection to Remote WCM content server to fetch content at runtime.

Seperation of Content and Presentation in Web Content Managment System.

2009-10-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

The foundation benefit of Lotus Web Content Management is to seperate the content from presentaion. Once the content is fixed you can render your content in many ways of presentaions like :
1) Web Page
2) Pdf document
3) as an RSS Feed
4) audio or video file.
5) download to PDA.

The content is same but the presentation can be selected in the best way of your need. It also shows consistency that if a design part changes still your content remains unaffected. Moreover the content writers dont require to posses HTML knowldege too.

What is Web content?

2009-10-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

The information that your enterprise offers through Web browser is called as Web Content. It consist of two parts:
1) The content
2) The design or presentation of that content.

Following are the two approaches for creating, managing and publishing Web content
1) Static Web Content
2) Dynamic Web Content

Static Web Content: It is kind of content which is directly embedded into the presentation or design and statically put into the web page. For creating such kind of content we require a person with IT skills who can translate the content into HTML before it is posted to website or portal.

Disadvantages of Static content:
1) Due to its static nature the content is difficult to use and alter.
2) Requires a person with web design and IT knowledge.

Dynamic Web Content: Rather than embedding the information directly together with the design, dynamic Web content treats the content and the presentation of the content as two distinct entities. By separating the Web content from the presentation layer, you can manage and deliver content quickly and efficiently, independent of its presentation. The ability to manage both content and its presentation layer as separate entities is enabled most frequently by
using Web content management systems.

Advantages of Dynamic Web Content:
1) Authors do not face the technical side of web technologies.
2) Reusibility of Content.
3) Organized and manageable.
4) right people is involved in right kind of work.

What is Content and Content Management ?

2009-10-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

Content can be referred to the information regarding the business. It can be the work that the enterprise does i.e inormation regsrding the enterprise, their services and business operations.
It can also be categorized into videos, audios, documents, discussions and emails etc.

Content Management involves management and storage of above types of contents. It makes information easy to find, use, update, and discard when the time comes.

Objectives of Content Management as defined

"Provide an efficient and secure solution for managing content within the enterprise, including enterprise-wide content storage, access, search, distribution, and retention. This is especially true with the current focus on corporate accountability and regulatory compliance".

Introduction to IBM Lotus Web Content Management v 6.1

2009-10-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

In this competitive world, it is important to make your business visible in your respective market place. With the existence of the internet, the web has become a medium to visible your business information globally. Globally organizations use the internet to deliver their presence from basic organization and company information to e-commerce.

IBM Lotus Web Content Management provides a sophisticated Web content
management tool and platform that is designed to accelerate the delivery and
management of critical business information. It enables a collaborative approach to content creation for individuals and teams. It allows for approval of processes, management, and assets. Lotus Web Content Management is an extremely powerful and sophisticated tool that is remarkably easy to use.

JSR 168 missing Portlet Filters.

2009-09-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

A portlet filter in Portlets is same as a servlet filter in Servlets. Hence a portlet filter is an object which intercepts or modify s the output to or from a portlet before it is aggregated to the portal page. I cant find anything in JSR 168 to achieve this feature but you can find vendor specific api's for it else you can use JSR 286 to work with it.

Inter-Portlet Communication missing in JSR168 !!

2009-09-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Inter-portlet communication is the ability of one portlet to communicate with another portlet. This is one of the most important feature when we talk about portlets and portals. Looking to its importance many portal vendors have provided their own specific api's to achieve inter-portlet communication but this is something JSR 168 is missing and have to work on it before releasing next version. As per now to achieve inter-portlet communication in JSR 168 the developers are storing data in session at application scope level or storing it at portal level.
Developers are also using Ajax for acheiving inter-portel communication. In my last project I have used Ajax to achieve inter-portelt communication between the portlets.

Know what are the features missing in JSR 168......

2009-09-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

JSR 168 missed or lacked some major features which made specification developers to think and add these features in newer version. Below are some of the important features which JSR 168 missed:

* inter-portlet communication
* portlet filters
* common support for proper web frameworks
* serving non-html resources (pdf, doc, images etc.)

Interview Questions - SQL

2009-07-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

What is Stored Procedure?
A stored procedure is a named group of SQL statements that have been previously created and stored in the server database. Stored procedures accept input parameters so that a single procedure can be used over the network by several clients using different input data. And when the procedure is modified, all clients automatically get the new version. Stored procedures reduce network traffic and
improve performance. Stored procedures can be used to help ensure the integrity of the database.
e.g. sp_helpdb, sp_renamedb, sp_depends etc.

What is Trigger?
A trigger is a SQL procedure that initiates an action when an event (INSERT, DELETE or UPDATE) occurs. Triggers are stored in and managed by the DBMS.Triggers are used to maintain the referential integrity of data by changing the data in a systematic fashion. A trigger cannot be called or executed;the DBMS automatically fires the trigger as a result of a data modification to the associated table.
Triggers can be viewed as similar to stored procedures in that both consist of procedural logic that is stored at the database level. Stored procedures, however, are not event-drive and are not attached to a specific table as triggers are. Stored procedures are explicitly executed by invoking a CALL to the procedure while triggers are implicitly executed. In addition, triggers can also execute stored
procedures.

Nested Trigger: A trigger can also contain INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE logic within itself, so when the trigger is fired because of data modification it can also cause another data modification, thereby firing another trigger. A trigger that contains data modification logic within itself is called a nested trigger.

What is View?
A simple view can be thought of as a subset of a table. It can be used for retrieving data, as well as updating or deleting rows. Rows updated or deleted in the view are updated or deleted in the table the view was created with. It should also be noted that as data in the original table changes, so does data in the view, as views are the way to look at part of the original table. The results of using a view are not permanently stored in the database. The data accessed through a view is actually constructed using standard T-SQL select command and can come from one to many different base tables or even other views.

What is Index?
An index is a physical structure containing pointers to the data. Indices are created in an existing table to locate rows more quickly and efficiently. It is possible to create an index on one or more columns of a table, and each index is given a name. The users cannot see the indexes, they are just used to speed
up queries. Effective indexes are one of the best ways to improve performance in a database application. A table scan happens when there is no index available to help a query. In a table scan SQL Server examines every row in the table to satisfy the query results. Table scans are sometimes unavoidable, but on large tables, scans have a terrific impact on performance.
Clustered indexes define the physical sorting of a database table’s rows in the storage media. For this reason, each database table may have only one clustered index.
Non-clustered indexes are created outside of the database table and contain a sorted list of references to the table itself.

What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key?
Both primary key and unique enforce uniqueness of the column on which they are defined. But by default primary key creates a clustered index on the column, where are unique creates a nonclustered index by default. Another major difference is that, primary key doesn't allow NULLs, but unique key allows one NULL only.

What is difference between DELETE & TRUNCATE commands?
Delete command removes the rows from a table based on the condition that we provide with a WHERE clause. Truncate will actually remove all the rows from a table and there will be no data in the table after we run the truncate command.

Difference between Function and Stored Procedure?
UDF can be used in the SQL statements anywhere in the WHERE/HAVING/SELECT section where as Stored procedures cannot be.UDFs that return tables can be treated as another rowset. This can be used in JOINs with other tables.
Inline UDF's can be though of as views that take parameters and can be used in JOINs and other Rowset operations.

What types of Joins are possible with Sql Server?
Joins are used in queries to explain how different tables are related. Joins also let you select data from a table depending upon data from another table.
Types of joins: INNER JOINs, OUTER JOINs, CROSS JOINs. OUTER JOINs are further classified as LEFT OUTER JOINS, RIGHT OUTER JOINS and FULL OUTER JOINS.

What is the difference between a HAVING CLAUSE and a WHERE CLAUSE?
Specifies a search condition for a group or an aggregate. HAVING can be used only with the SELECT statement. HAVING is typically used in a GROUP BY clause. When GROUP BY is not used, HAVING behaves like a WHERE clause. Having Clause is basically used only with the GROUP BY function in a query. WHERE Clause is applied to each row before they are part of the GROUP BY function in a query.

What are primary keys and foreign keys?
Primary keys are the unique identifiers for each row. They must contain unique values and cannot be null. Due to their importance in relational databases, Primary keys are the most fundamental of all keys and constraints. A table can have only one Primary key. Foreign keys are both a method of ensuring data integrity and a manifestation of the relationship between tables.

What is Identity?
Identity (or AutoNumber) is a column that automatically generates numeric values. A start and increment value can be set, but most DBA leave these at 1. A GUID column also generates numbers,the value of this cannot be controled. Identity/GUID columns do not need to be indexed.

What is Self Join?
This is a particular case when one table joins to itself, with one or two aliases to avoid confusion. A self join can be of any type, as long as the joined tables are the same. A self join is rather unique in that it involves a relationship with only one table. The common example is when company have a hierarchal reporting structure whereby one member of staff reports to another.

What is Cross Join?
A cross join that does not have a WHERE clause produces the Cartesian product of the tables involved in the join. The size of a Cartesian product result set is the number of rows in the first table multiplied by the number of rows in the second table. The common example is when company wants to combine each product with a pricing table to analyze each product at each price.

List few advantages of Stored Procedure.· Stored procedure can reduced network traffic and latency, boosting application performance.
· Stored procedure execution plans can be reused, staying cached in SQL Server's memory,reducing server overhead.
· Stored procedures help promote code reuse.
· Stored procedures can encapsulate logic. You can change stored procedure code without affecting clients.
· Stored procedures provide better security to your data.

Know how to use split() method of String class in Java...!!!

2009-05-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

Java 1.4 introduced a new method called split() in order to simplify a task of breaking string into substrings or tokens. It takes regular expression as parameter and breaks the string into substrings by matching this regular exp within the string.

Two methods are used for this purpose

1) split(String exp): In this exp is the regular expression and it will return an array of strings.

example:
String names= "Nagpur,Pune,Mumbai,Delhi";
String names[]=names.split(",");

O/P : When you iterate that array the output will be
Nagpur
Pune
Mumbai
Delhi

2) split(String exp, int max): Now this method has two parameters
where exp- regular exp
max- number of times to apply that pattern.

Location for WebSphere Portal default Login Portlet ...!!!

2009-05-27T04:45:00.000-07:00

If anybody working on IBM's default login portlet then you can find the location of the login.war at

[Drive]:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\installedApps\\PA_Login_Portlet_App.ear\login.war\WEB-INF\jsp\LoginView.jsp

Here LoginView.jsp is the default login view of your portal.

Exception: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified..!!!

2009-05-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

It might be possible that when you try to establish connection with Database using JDBC:ODBC approach you can face the following exception
[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

fix:

Delete the USER data source name and define it as a SYSTEM data source name.

In Windows 2000:
-> Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools ->
Data Sources (ODBC):
- User DSN : delete the specified User DSN
- System DSN : create a new System DSN

Know how to connect Microsoft Access Database using JDBC..!!!

2009-05-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

Interested in connecting to Ms Access using JDBC..!!! The following post will guide you achieve this.

Microsoft has developed a data access method called ODBC, and MS Access databases understand this method. We cannot make a connection directly to an ODBC data source from Java, but Sun has provided a bridge from JDBC to ODBC. This bridge gives the DriverManager the understanding of how to communicate with an ODBC (ie a MS Access) data source.

As we know that we can get the connection object of java.sql.Connection with the use of DriverManager class. We tell the DriverManager what type of driver to use to handle the connections to databases, and from there, ask it to give us a connection to a particular database of that type.

So the first thing we'll do is set up our DriverManager and let it know that we want to communicate with ODBC data sources via the JDBC:ODBC bridge. We do this by calling the static forName() method of the Class class. Here is an entire program that accomplishes what we're after:

Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");

Now their are two ways to get Connection Ms Acess :

1)Get a connection by direct access: I will not suggest you to go for this approach, but still for your understanding below is the code for this approach. Here get a connection is to go directly after the MS Access database file

try {
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
String filename = "c:/java/customerInfo.mdb";
String database = "jdbc:odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=";
database+= filename.trim() + ";DriverID=22;READONLY=true}"; // add on to the end
// now we can get the connection from the DriverManager
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection( database ,"","");
}

catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println("Error: " + e);
}

2)Set up a DSN and get a connection through that: This approach is the recommended one.

Microsoft has provided a method to build a quick Jet-Engine database on your computer without the need for any specific database software (it comes standard with Windows). Using this method, we can even create a blank Microsoft Access database without having MS Access installed!

As we learned earlier, MS Access data bases can be connected to via ODBC. Instead of accessing the database directly, we can access it via a Data Source Name (DSN). Here's how to set up a DSN on your system:

1. Open Windows' ODBC Data Source Administrator as follows:
* In Windows 95, 98, or NT, choose Start > Settings > Control Panel, then double-click the ODBC Data Sources icon. Depending on your system, the icon could also be called ODBC or 32bit ODBC.
* In Windows 2000, choose Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Data Sources.
2. In the ODBC Data Source Administrator dialog box, click the System DSN tab.
3. Click Add to add a new DSN to the list.
4. Scroll down and select the Microsoft Access (.MDB) driver
5. Type in the name "mdbTEST" (no quotes, but leave the cases the same) for the Data Source Name
6. Click CREATE and select a file to save the database to (I chose "d:\java\mdbTEST.mdb") - this creates a new blank MS Access database!
7. Click "ok" all the way out

Now our data source is done! Here's a complete program showing how to access your new DSN data source:

String dataSourceName = "customerInfo";
String dbURL = "jdbc:odbc:" + dataSourceName;
try {
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(dbURL, "","");
}
catch (Exception err) {
System.out.println( "Error: " + err );
}

Now you have established connection with your database successfully.

Know how to retrieve components of a date using SQL...!!!

2009-05-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

You can retrieve different components of date from timestamp using SQL functionDATEPART. You can extract date components like YEAR, MONTH, DAY, HOUR, MINUTE, SECOND using this Datepart function. The syntax for using this function is

datepart(date component to retrieve, date)

Example: Suppose you want to retrieve year component from customer table's DOB column having timestamp type, the query will be like

Select datepart(year, DOB) from customer where cust_name='xyz'

ResultSet:- 1984

Same way you can use:
datepart(day, DOB) for day
datepart(minute, DOB) for minute
datepart(month, DOB) for month
datepart(hour, DOB) for HOUR
datepart(second, DOB) for second

The above function works fine with SQLServer but with Oracle and MySql I guess it wont work. In that case you can use extract(year from DOB).

Know how to get current date timestamp in SQL..!!!

2009-05-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

In my recent project i was looking for a built-In SQL function that returns me the current date as timestamp. As we know Date values are stored in Tables as timestamp.A SQL timestamp is a record containing date/time data, such as the month, day, year, hour, and minutes/seconds.
SQL offers a built-in function called GETDATE() that returns the current date in the form of a SQL timestamp.
Hence to get current date run the below query:
SELECT GETDATE();

and the timestamp result will be
2009-05-20 01:23:45.150000.(Current Date)

Know how to Retrieve a Signer Trust Certificate from a remote endpoint?

2009-05-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

To rerieve a Signer Trust Certificate from a remote endpoint and save to RAD's local Key Store, you may use either:
Jython Administrative Scripts
RAD WAS WTE Admin Console as shown below.

Launch the WAS Administration Console

• Open the Navigation Menu Security folder on the left.
• Click SSL certificate and key management

Click Manage endpoint security configurations

Under Inbound -> [cellname] -> nodes
Click [nodename](NodeDefaultSSLSettings,null) (should be the upper link)

Click Key stores and certificates (on the far right)

Click NodeDefaultTrustStore (should be the 2nd link)

Click Signer certificates (on the far right)

Click the Retrieve from port button (in the upper area of the screen)

Supply the endpoint Host ( Web Service DNS alias)
Supply the endpoint Port (443)
Supply an endpoint Alias (anything you desire)
Click the Retrieve signer information button

Click OK

Verify the new certificate entry
Click Save (top of screen)

Logout of the Admin Console
Bounce the RAD WAS 6.1 WTE server

WebSphere Portal -Know How to disable DOJO loading..!!!

2009-04-27T10:02:00.001-07:00

As we know WebSphere Portal has inbuilt DOJO support. DOJO is used to built interactive applications with dynamic capabilities. Now everytime your portal page is loaded leads to loading of DOJO and DIJIT javascripts. But in many cases if we just are building simple portal pages having very simple themes applied to it which dont use DOJO then it is unnecessary to load DOJO functions each time the portal page gets loaded. Hence what we can do is that we can disable this DOJO loading. In order to reduce DOJO loading which is associated with our theme go to the head_links.jspf and comment out the following lines if you know your theme is not using them and you dont want your page to load them :

You can comment the above lines in order to disable DOJO loading in WebSphere Portal.

Know how to use DOJO toolkit with WebSphere Portal

2009-04-23T01:55:00.000-07:00

Dojo allows you to easily build dynamic capabilities into web pages and any other environment that supports JavaScript sanely. You can use the components that Dojo provides to make your web sites more usable, responsive, and functional. WebSphere Portal also allows use to use DOJO in order to build interactive portal applications. To know how to use DOJO toolkit with WebSphere Portal click here.

WebSphere Portal - Know what action to take if portal's default Login portlet gets deleted..!!!

2009-04-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

I was working on some customization of login portlet. I have deployed my own login portlet and added mylogin portlet to the login page.
Somehow accidently login portlet (portal default) got deleted and my own login portlet is also not working.
Because of this i am not able to login to portal and can't put back the ibm's login portlet on the login page.

To resolve this issue, I used the following URL whic is portals automatic login URL and its a standard
http://servername:port/wps/portal/cxml/04_SD9ePMtCP1I800I_KydQvyHFUBADPmuQy?userid=userid&password=password

With the help of this URL you can automatically login to the portal.
enjoy... :)

Know how to send mail using Java Mail API..

2009-04-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

The following are the core classes of Java Mail:

1. Session
2. Authenticator
3. Store
4. Folder
5. Message
6. Address
7. Transport

Just like the classes of other Java APIs, the factory class pattern is used in all the above classes. It will be clearer when the classes are discussed. I will be discussing the first four classes in this part as they are the "founding" classes of any Mail application.

1. Session:

Session forms the basis of any client server based application, framework or APIs. The Java Mail API is no exception. The Session class defines a basic mail session. To pass values to the Session object, the Properties object could be used. Since all the constructors of this class are private, a sharable object can be obtained by using the method of the same class -- getDefaultInstance(). This method takes two parameters in its parameterized form -- an object of Properties class, and one of the Authenticator class. The Authenticator will be discussed shortly. So, to get an instance of Session class the code is:
Properties props = new Properties();
// fill props with any information
Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, null);

If a shared instance is not what is required, the getInstance() method to get a unique instance looks like this:
Properties props = new Properties();
// fill props with any information
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

The parameter for Authenticator is supplied as null. This can be done to keep the application simple, but it is not recommended.

2. Authenticator:

As in the case of java.net packages, the Mail APIs can take advantage of the Authenticator class. This class provides access to the protected resources via username and password. The resources can be anything ranging from simple files to servers. For Java Mail, the resource is the server. In essence the Authenticator object passes as a parameter to the getInstance()/getDefaultInstance() method, and controls the security aspect of the Session object.

There are two ways to use the Authenticator. First, you can separately subclass the Authenticator and provide its object to the getInstance()/getDefaultInstance() method. The other way is to subclass the Authenticator by the same class that encapsulates the mailing logic. The following is an example of former approach:
Properties props = new Properties();
// fill props with any information
Authenticator auth = new MyAuthenticator();
Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, auth);

To make use of the other approach the code is:
Properties props = new Properties();
// fill props with any information
Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, this);

3. Store:

This class represents a mail storage. To retrieve messages, one must connect to this store. But before that, an object of the Store class must be obtained, which is done like this:
Store store = session.getStore("pop3");
store.connect(host, username, password);

The getStore() method of Session class provides an instance of Store. The parameter is the protocol to be used. It can be either “imap” for IMAP and “pop3” for POP3. Once the Store object has been obtained, the connect() method can be called with hostname/IP, username and password as parameters to connect to the Store. The connect() has a no parameter form. If the Authenticator’s object has been passed to the getInstance()/getDefaultInstance() along with the Properties object containing the hostname, then the no parameter form can be used.

4. Folder:

All the messages belonging to a particular user are placed inside a Folder within the Store. The Folder represents such a folder. As is the case with Store, an object of Folder could be obtained by calling the getFolder() method of the Store class. The getFolder() method takes only one parameter -- the name of the folder to be opened as a string. To open the inbox pass “INBOX” as the parameter. In code:
Folder folder = store.getFolder("INBOX");
folder.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);

Once the instance of Folder has been obtained, calling the open method on that instance will actually open the folder. Once opened, the messages can be retrieved. The open() method accepts one parameter representing the state in which the folder has to be opened. The constants provided in the Folder class can be used to provide the required state. Of the available states the most common are “read only” represented by Folder.READ_ONLY and “read write” represented by Folder.READ_WRITE.

Now we will see how to put it all together as a class that can be extended and reused. So let's get started.

Start with the package name.

package ap.mail;

Then come the imports.
package ap.mail;
import ap.mail.MailAuthenticator;
import com.sun.mail.iap.Protocol;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.Vector;
import java.util.Hashtable;
import org.apache.james.userrepository.DefaultJamesUser;
import org.apache.james.services.UsersStore;

The last two imports are important if the password authenticator has to be used.

Next is the class. The class must subclass the Authenticator, as the class itself would implement the logic for password authentication.
public class MailClient extends Authenticator
{
:
:
}

The variables to be used across the methods have to be declared.

public class MailClient extends Authenticator
{
protected String from;
protected Session session;
protected PasswordAuthentication authentication;
protected Folder rootFolder,currentFolder;
protected Store store;
:
}

Then comes the constructor. Since the Properties will be used to pass the information regarding the host username and password, the object of the Properties class would be instantiated here.

public class MailClient extends Authenticator
{
protected String from;
protected Session session;
protected PasswordAuthentication authentication;
protected Folder rootFolder,currentFolder;
protected Store store;

public MailClient(String user, String host, boolean debug,String password)
{
from = user + '@' + host;
authentication = new PasswordAuthentication(user, password);
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("mail.user", user);
props.put("mail.host", host);
props.put("mail.debug", debug ? "true" : "false");
props.put("mail.store.protocol", "pop3");
props.put("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
session = Session.getInstance(props, this);
}

:
}

To provide the authentication support, the getPasswordAuthenticator() method has to be overridden. Since this application would not provide its own implementation, this method would just return an object of type PasswordAuthentication.

public class MailClient extends Authenticator
{
protected String from;
protected Session session;
protected PasswordAuthentication authentication;
protected Folder rootFolder,currentFolder;
protected Store store;

public MailClient(String user, String host, boolean debug,String password)
{
from = user + '@' + host;
authentication = new PasswordAuthentication(user, password);
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("mail.user", user);
props.put("mail.host", host);
props.put("mail.debug", debug ? "true" : "false");
props.put("mail.store.protocol", "pop3");
props.put("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
session = Session.getInstance(props, this);
}
public PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
{
return authentication;
}

:
}

The next step is to connect to the store.

public class MailClient extends Authenticator
{
protected String from;
protected Session session;
protected PasswordAuthentication authentication;
protected Folder rootFolder,currentFolder;
protected Store store;

public MailClient(String user, String host, boolean debug,String password)
{
from = user + '@' + host;
authentication = new PasswordAuthentication(user, password);
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("mail.user", user);
props.put("mail.host", host);
props.put("mail.debug", debug ? "true" : "false");
props.put("mail.store.protocol", "pop3");
props.put("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
session = Session.getInstance(props, this);
}
public PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
{
return authentication;
}
public boolean connectToStore()
{
boolean connected=false;
try
{
store = session.getStore();
store.connect();
rootFolder = store.getDefaultFolder();
openFolder("INBOX");
connected=true;
}
catch (NoSuchProviderException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (MessagingException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
return connected;
}

:
}

Once the connection to the store has been established, to extract the messages, the folder has to be opened. That is done like this:

public class MailClient extends Authenticator
{
protected String from;
protected Session session;
protected PasswordAuthentication authentication;
protected Folder rootFolder,currentFolder;
protected Store store;

public MailClient(String user, String host, boolean debug,String password)
{
from = user + '@' + host;
authentication = new PasswordAuthentication(user, password);
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("mail.user", user);
props.put("mail.host", host);
props.put("mail.debug", debug ? "true" : "false");
props.put("mail.store.protocol", "pop3");
props.put("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
session = Session.getInstance(props, this);
}
public PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
{
return authentication;
}
public boolean connectToStore()
{
boolean connected=false;
try
{
store = session.getStore();
store.connect();
rootFolder = store.getDefaultFolder();
openFolder("INBOX");
connected=true;
}
catch (NoSuchProviderException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (MessagingException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
return connected;
}
public boolean openFolder(String folder)
{
boolean isOpenend=false;
try
{
currentFolder = rootFolder.getFolder(folder);
currentFolder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);
isOpenend=true;
}
catch (MessagingException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
return isOpenend;
}

}

That’s it. This class can now connect to a mail server. In this case, it connects to an Apache James Server. And this brings this discussion to its conclusion. In this part the discussion was focused on the basics of Java Mail. The next part will focus on APIs that help applications send huge amounts of data, and on how to actually achieve this end. Till next time.

Cross page portlet communication in WebSphere Portal Server using URL Generation API

2009-04-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

How can I make communication between two portlet without using wires when you want to paas parameters from one portlet to other and that shoud be used by second portlet.
Well this can be achieved using URL Generation API, just use the code below on your SourceJSP of SourcePortlet.In the code below, PAGE_UNIQUE_NAME would be page name on which you have target portlet and Portlet name would be your target portlet name.Params would be your parameters that you want to pass to target portlet.

String homeURL = PortletURLHelper.generateUrl(PAGE_UNIQUE_NAME, Portlet Name, HashMap params, renderRequest, renderResponse);

you can get param values in target portlet using the following code

Map map = renderRequest.getParameterMap();

now just iterate the map and find the values you passed from source portlet.

Customizing Themes & Skins in WebSphere Portal: how to add custom items to the portlet context menu

2009-04-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

As we know the Portlet Context Menu contains controls to change the portlet's mode, state, and position on a page.In figure below, you can see that with different access rights, you have the ability not only to change the mode and the state, but also to change where that portlet renders on the page. From this menu, you can either move the portlet down in the order of the page or move it to the column on the right.

The above figure shows that the portlet context menu varies based on factors such as permission, placement, and the portlet with which it is interacting. Additionally, this menu is extensible in two ways. First, you can add items directly to the JSP file that renders the portlet context menu; Second, you can use theme extensions to add items to the menu with little coding involved.

To Know how to add a custom item option in portlet Context menu using theme extensions Click Here.

Know how to remove the Minimize, Maximize and other options out of the portlet context menu in WebSphere Portal 6.0...

2009-04-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Working on my current project, I had a requirment to remove portlet context menus such has Maximize, Minimize, Move up, Move right etc from the Portlet Context Menu. Themes and skins in WebSphere Portal provide the framework for the UI, which includes page navigation, page layout, containers to hold portlet-rendered markup, and controls for user interaction. The title of the portlet as well as the portlet context menu are the part of the skin is rendering. Control.jsp in skin folder is basically responsile to render the portelt title and portlet Context menu. Following code in Control. jsp is responsible for portelt context menu

The URL generated from the code in listing 2 targets the JSP file that renders the portlet context menu, the themeTemplate attribute tells WebSphere Portal what JSP file to render, and the value in themeTemplate must match the file name of the JSP file excluding the file extension, which in our case is portletContextMenu.
Hence all the portlet menu items are from portletContextMenu.jsp inside themes folder.
Now to remove a particular portelt menu, look for the following code inside porteltContextMenu.jsp

You can delete the above code to remove Maximize portlet menu. Similarly other portlet menus can be removed. You can find code for portlet menus like Personalize, Edit_Default, Config, Maximize, Minimize, Help, Delete etc in portletContextMenu.jsp. Hence for removing any menu, you can just find the entry of that particular menu and can remove it.

If you have any better approach or any suggestions to improve this post, please leave a comment below.

Know How to Change a Portlet Title at "Run Time" in WebSphere Portal V6!

2009-04-04T03:47:00.000-07:00

Well in my recent project i had a requirement to change portlet title at runtime . I followed the following approach suggested by IBM

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0612_rick/0612_rick.html


After setting the title in RenderResponse.setTitle() method,
you need to have following code to calculate the dynamic portlet id :

public void getDynamicPortletID(RenderRequest request) throws Exception {
String portletId = "";
try {
       HttpServletRequest httpRequest = (HttpServletRequest)request;
       RunData rundata = RunData.from(httpRequest);
       LayoutNode layoutnode =
(LayoutNode) rundata.getAttribute("com.ibm.wps.composition.element");

com.ibm.portal.ObjectID objectid;

if (layoutnode == null)
  throw new IllegalStateException("PortletIDTag: Control cannot be found!");
 objectid = layoutnode.getObjectID();
 if (objectid != null)
         portletId = IdentificationMgr.getIdentification().serialize(objectid,false);

     }
    catch (Exception e) {
              e.printStackTrace();

     }
 }
After calculating the dynamic portletId, with the help of this
portletId use the following code in your
respective JSP


var dynamicTitle = "<%=request.getAttribute(com.ibm.portal.portlet.Constants.DYNAMIC_TITLE)%>";
var titleElement =document.getElementById("title.<%=portletID%>");
if (titleElement != null) {
if(dynamicTitle != "" && dynamicTitle != "null")
titleElement.innerHTML = dynamicTitle;

Note :- This works fine with Mozilla and IE 7.0 browsers.
But has problems with IE 6.0.It gives "Operation TimeOut"
Error.


For reason that why it happeans  :-

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/181050

Hence to solve this problem, I used DOJO. As WebSphere Portal Server
implicitly uses DOJO, it was better to find a solution using DOJO

function init() {

var dynamicTitle = "<%=request.getAttribute(com.ibm.portal.portlet.Constants.DYNAMIC_TITLE)%>";

var titleElement =document.getElementById("title.<%=portletID%>");
if (titleElement != null) {
if(dynamicTitle != "" && dynamicTitle != "null")
titleElement.innerHTML = dynamicTitle;
}
}
dojo.addOnLoad( init );

Now it works fine with all the Browzers........

If you have any better approach or any suggestions
to improve this post, please leave a comment below.

JSR 168, 286 Portlets & Portal Interview Questions

2009-04-04T00:45:00.000-07:00

What is a portal ?

A portal can be best described as a web site that acts as a "point of entry" or a gate to a larger system. While it seems pretty difficult to define a portal in the strictest sense, these are some of the common features of portals:

Content aggregation:
Portals tend to aggregate content from multiple, disparate sources and provide one unified view of the same.
Personalization:
This refers to the ability of the portal to tailor the content/services that it offers according to the user of the portal.
Search:
Most if not all portals, offer some form of searching of it's content and sometimes even content from external sources.
Single Sign On:
Allows users to authenticate once to the portal and thereby allows access to many other systems without the need for re authentication.

What is a JSR 168 Portlet ?

Prior to JSR 168, almost all portal platforms offered their own proprietary approach to create pluggable portal components. For example, IBM had IBM portlets, Sun(iPlanet) had Providers, SAP had iViews and Plumtree had Gadgets.

JSR 168 aims to standardize these pluggable portal components so that they are independent of the actual portal server that they are written to. What this means is that one can migrate portlets seamlessly from one portal server to another without any code change.

What are the types of request in JSR 168 portlets?

Their are two types of request :-
1) RenderRequest
2) ActionRequest

What are the differences between portlets and servlets?

Essentially, Servlets provide content that normally takes up the whole page in a browser (unless you're using frames), and portlets provide content that is wrapped by a window. With portlets, you can have multiple portlets side by side with one another and each one can provide content and functionality that is different from the other. A portlet can provide the complete interaction for one type of application, while another portlet can provide content for another type of application. The portal can provide some house keeping functionality and secured single point of entry to all of the portlets on a page. As for the particulars (similarities/differences) between them, please continue reading.

Here are some similarities:

Servlets and portlets are web based components that utilize Java for their implementation
Portlets are managed by a portlet container similar to a servlet container
Both of these components generate content, which can be static or dynamic
Both portlets and servlets have a lifecycle that is controlled by the container
The client/server model is used for both servlets and portlets
The packaging and deployment are essentially the same
The manner in which the classes are loaded and the class loaders that perform the work are also the same
Lifecycle management is similar
The Request and Response semantics are also similar

Here are some differences:

Servlets can provide complete web pages, whereas portlets only provide fragments. These fragments are then aggregated to form a complete web page by the portal
Portlets aren?t allowed to generated HTML code that contains tags such as base, body, frame, frameset, head, html, or title. The iframe tag can be used with caution.
The user cannot access a portlet directly using a URL in the way that a servlet is accessed. Instead, the URL points to the page containing all of the portlets on one page
Communication between the web client and the portlets is performed through the portal
Portlets can be provided with buttons or controls to manipulate the portlets? window states or portlet modes
Multiple instances of a single portlet can be placed onto the same page
Portlets support persistent configuration and customization
Portlets also support user profile information
Portlets support two scopes within the session; application scope and portlet scope

There are several things that servlets are allowed to do, but portlets aren?t. These include the following:

Portlet aren?t allowed to set the character set encoding of the response
Portlet also aren?t allowed to set the HTTP headers on the response
Portlet cannot manipulate the URL of the client request to the portal

What is a portlet container ?

A portlet container runs portlets and provides them with the required runtime environment. A portlet container contains portlets and manages their lifecycle. It also provides persistent storage for portlet preferences. A portlet container receives requests from the portal to execute requests on the portlets hosted by it.A portlet container is not responsible for aggregating the content produced by the portlets. It is the responsibility of the portal to handle the aggregation.

Can I get the `HttpServletRequest` from a `Portlet`?

The PortletRequest object is supposed to give you everything you need i.e. parameters, attributes, dispatching, etc. As per the spec, you should not need the HttpServletRequest.

However, some portlet container implementations do provide some kind of hack to get hold of HttpServletRequest e.g. in Pluto you can cast the RenderRequest to HttpServletRequest. But, be aware that this behavior cannot be relied upon.

What's difference between `PortletConfig.getInitParameter()` and `PortletContext.getInitParameter()`?

Context-wide init-params share the same context space as Servlets and JSPs belonging to the same application and they are defined in the web.xml file. You can get them using PortletContext.getInitParameter() method.

Portlet-wide initialization parameters on the other hand belong in the portlet.xml file and you can get them using PortletConfig.getInitParameter() method.

What is a PortalSession Interface ?

User identification across many requests and transient information storage about the user is processed by PortletSession interace. One PortletSession is created per portlet application per client.

The PortletSession interface provides a way to identify a user across more than one request and to store transient information about that user.

The storing of information is defined in two scopes- APPLICATION_SCOPE and PORTLET_SCOPE.

APPLICATION_SCOPE: All the objects in the session are available to all portlets,servlets, JSPs of the same portlet application, by using APPLICATION_SCOPE.

PORTLET_SCOPE: All the objects in the session are available to the portlet during the requests for the same portlet window. The attributes persisted in the PORTLET_SCOPE are not protected from other web components.

What is a PortletContext Interface ?

The portlet view of the portlet container is defined by PortletContext. It allows the availability of resources to the portlet. Using this context, the portlet log can be accessed and URL references to resources can be obtained. There is always only one context per portlet application per JVM.

Is there any difference betweeb websphere and weblogic ?

Webpshere tends to focus more on integration, connectivity and web services. it has rich implementation of J2EE, better performance, more extensive integration and transaction management. In terms of trnsaction weblogic is having default transaction attribute as ’supports’, but websphere does not have any default transaction attribute.

How to implement JDBC-ODBC bridge driver (Type 1 ) in Websphere?

If you use JDBC type (I) driver you dont need to add any driver in websphere. you simply created DSN and use it locally, same we use java class, if you use Type(2) and Type(4) so first go to admin console then go to connection, then add driver there fill other info like conn. size, uname pass, max conn. and connect it to you applications.

What is the difference between application server and web server?

ApplicationServer: takes care of Security, Transaction, Multithreading, Resource pooling, load balancing, clustering, performence, highly availability, scalability, etc. Exposes business logic to client applications through various protocols, possibly including HTTP. Supports deployment of .war and .ear filesApplication server = webserver + EJB container.

Webserver: handles HTTP protocol. Receives HTTP request, it responds with an HTTP response.

Explain relationship betweeb the Servlet Container and Portlet Container?

The portlet container is an extension of the servlet container. As such, a portlet container
can be built on top of an existing servlet container or it may implement all the
functionality of a servlet container. Regardless of how a portlet container is implemented,
its runtime environment is assumed to support Servlet Specification 2.3

Explain portlet lifecycle?

A portlet is managed through a well defined life cycle that defines how it is loaded,
instantiated and initialized, how it handles requests from clients, and how it is taken out
of service. This life cycle of a portlet is expressed through the init, processAction,
render and destroy methods of the Portlet interface.

Career in Portals & JSR 168 Portlet technology ............

2009-04-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Planning for a career in Portal Technology....! Well definitely you can per sue your career in Portals . Any S/w Engg working for Java, J2EE can per sue his/her career in Portals. Many companies (large + middle) are now practicing Portal Practice in their workplace. Giants like IBM, Oracle , Bea, Wipro, Infosys, Accenture and a never ending list are all having Portal practices at their end. Large Projects are now executed in this technology.
Options available are :
1) You can be a JSR 168/ JSR 286 portlet developer.
For this the basic requirement is to know Java with flavor of J2EE. Like Servlets, Portlets has its own lifecycle. You need a Portal Server to deploy your applications. Hence knowledge of Java is must.

2) You can be a Portal administrator .
Portal administrator plays with the environment ans configuration of the Portal. These persons has vast knowledge of Portal . Portal is like their child, can change its look and feel also. Hence they are called as Portal Specialist.

Is Portals - Next Generation Technology ...!

2009-04-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

Portals helps you deliver exceptional Web experiences, extend your business assets, run your business efficiently and grow as you go. It provides a rich, declarative environment for creating a portal Web interface and accessing dynamic data with an extensible framework for J2EE-based enterprise application access. Portal customers can enhance their deployments with enterprise content management capabilities through Content Management Systems and can add Enterprise 2.0 capabilities to their existing portals.
Return Of Investment (ROI) is amazing with Portals leading major Tech companies to enter in this technology like IBM with WebSphere Portals, Bea, Oracle, LifeRay, JBoss and many others taking Portals to a new level.
All these things may say that Portals can be a next generation technology but its the
future and the Technology lovers who will decide that Is Portals - Next Generation Technology....!

Introduction for JSR 168 - the Portlet Specification

2009-04-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

JSR(Java Specification Request) 168 is basically the Portlet Specification version 1.0 where standard for Java Portlet API is described.Any portlet developed using this standard can be deployed on any JSR 168 compliant portal servers.

Before moving further, let me first tell you the need why this specification was introduced…

In my case, my company (http://www.syncex.com/) is practicing Portal technology for more than 4 years and are providing and developing collaborative portlets which are very useful from an organization’s perspective.If for the development of these portlets,we had used any specific vendor’s portlet API e.g API provided by IBM, then we would have targeted buisness of only those organizations whose portal servers are compatible with the portlets developed with this portlet API.For us it would have restricted our buisness since we cannot target all different available portal servers or we need to develop portlets with different portlet APIs available in the market which was never a solution.

This was my problem and I was in a desperate need of a kind of standard specification by which i can develop portlets which can run on many portal servers so that i can increase the business for my company.

This was my problem, now let me explain you the need in generalized manner .

As we know an enterprise portal is a unified access point for integrating information, people and processes of an organization often in the form of a web-based user interface. It is designed to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portlets.

With the emergence of an increasing number of enterprise portals, various vendors have created different APIs to develop different portlets. This variety of incompatible interfaces generate problems for application providers, portal customers, and portal server vendors.

To overcome these problems,some smart people(experts of portlet technology) introduced JSR (Java Specification Request) 168, the Portlet Specification version 1.0 and this specification was started to provide interoperability between portlets and portals.

So let me conclude that this specification was introduced for:
(1) Portal server vendors so that they can provide portlet engines
that conform to this standard.
(2)To save portal customers from incompatibility issues.
(3)Application providers (like me ) who can now follow a standard for their applications.

If anybody have any thought or different perspective on the use of JSR 168 then do share with me by commenting.