OracleAS Portal Developer Kit (PDK)
PDK New Features - PDK 10.1.2.0.2

Introduction

This release of the PDK includes new features and portlets for the building Java Portlets and PortalTools.

Java Portlets | Portal Tools | Portlet Standards

Java Portlets

Resource proxying

Resource links may now be rendered using the PDK-Java API method, oracle.portal.provider.v2.url.UrlUtils.constructResourceURL, that proxy via the page engine. This feature allows for cases where the URL of image links in a portlet reside on a server that is only available within a firewall. This feature is only compatible with versions 10.1.2.0.2 and later of the page engine. In an environment that doesn't support this feature, direct links will be rendered.

The feature embeds the resource URL inside a page url. To prevent spoofing of the embedded resource URL, a signature authenticates page engine requests for resources. The shared key to generate this signature must be specified in two places.

• In the page servlet Web deployment file, add a servlet initialisation parameter with the name resourceUrlKey and a value between 10 and 20 characters long containing alphanumeric characters.
• In the web provider's Web deployment file, add a provider level JNDI variable with the same value.

Export/Import of Portlet Customizations

API additions have been included which allow portlet customizations to be exported and imported by OracleAS Portal's export/import utilities. An implementation of those APIs is also included such that default portlet customizations are maintained when a portal page group or page is exported and imported. Note: this feature also depends on new functionality in OracleAS Portal version 10.1.2. Therefore, for PDK-Java based portlets to participate in export/import, both OracleAS Portal and PDK-Java must be 10.1.2.x versions.

The API additions, and new classes supporting the default implementation, mean that portlet customizations are sent back to the calling portal obfuscated in a SOAP message. For more information on how to augment, or otherwise override, the default behaviour, consult the Portlet Developer's Guide accompanying OracleAS Portal release 10.1.2.

If your portlet persists sensitive data to the preference store, you may wish to switch off the default export/import behaviour when upgrading to PDK-Java 10.1.2.0.0 while you consider the security implications. To accomplish this, include the following JDNI environment entry in your web application's deployment descriptor, web.xml:

<env-entry>
  <env-entry-name>oracle/portal/provider/global/transportEnabled</env-entry-name>
  <env-entry-value>false</env-entry-value>
  <env-entry-type>java.lang.String</env-entry-type>
</env-entry>

Portlet Standards

Production Support for JSR 168 and WSRP

Once upgraded to Oracle Portal 10.1.4, a repository only upgrade on top of OracleAS 10.1.2.0.2, your portal version provides production support for building and consuming standards-based portlets.  Oracle portal provides a Java Portlet Wizard within Oracle JDeveloper to build JSR 168 portlets and publish those portlet to Oracle's container or any portlet standards container.  You can then consume JSR 168 portlet with Oracle Portal through WSRP.  Oracle Portal also supports consuming any portlet through WSRP as well as JPDK portlets.

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Portal Tools

HTML Layout

In this release, OmniPortlet offers a new layout option —— the HTML layout. Using this layout, users specify their own HTML for displaying content. For example, a data source such as a spreadsheet could be displayed as a table with a header, repeating row section, and a footer, as the HTML layout enables you to define separate HTML snippets for displaying the header, the footer, and each row of data.

3D Effects for Charts

In the OmniPortlet Chart Layout, a 3D effect is now available. This feature adds another dimension to pie, bar, or line charts.

Data Source Support for Character-Separated Values

In previous releases, OmniPortlet parsed comma-separated values files only. In this release, portlet designers may specify a different delimiter character, such as a semicolon or tab.

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