Installation Instructions for the OracleAS Provider for Jive
Forums
OracleAS Portal Integration Solutions
Installation Instructions
- OracleAS
Provider for Jive Forums
| Last Updated: |
June 2005 |
| Status: |
Beta |
Contents
Introduction
File Structure
Installing the OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums
Introduction
The Oracle Application Server
(OracleAS) Provider for Jive Forums (http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/forums/)
contains four
portlets that expose Jive Forums Application content within OracleAS
Portal. The portlets provide OracleAS Portal users with
seamless, high-level interaction between the
two applications. The portlets allow users to:
- View topics posted on their favorite forums
- Create a new topic or post a reply to one
- Search the forums
- View the hot topics across all forums
- View all topics, forums, categories and users being watched by
the user
- View top reward points earners
The following portlets are bundled
in with the distribution:
- Forum Viewer
- Hot Topics
- Watched Items
- Rewards (available only for Jive Forums Expert Editions)
This document serves as an
installation and
configuration guide for the OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums. It
explains how to
- Setup and configure Oracle Application Server or a
standalone OC4J (Oracle Containers for J2EE) instance to run the
OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums
- Deploy and register the OracleAS
Provider for Jive Forums (included in this download) with
OracleAS Portal
The OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums is known to work against the
following versions of OracleAS Portal and Jive Forums:
| OracleAS Portal version |
9.0.2.x, 9.0.4.x, 10.1.2.x |
Jive Discussion Forum version
|
Jive Forums Expert Edition
4.1.x
Jive Forums Enterprise
Edition 4.1.x
Jive Forums Professional Edition 4.1.x |
Please see the Release
Notes for further information on which
browsers and JPDK versions the OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums has
been tested
against.
Jive
Forums is a powerful, open architecture, customizable community
product that supports dynamic, threaded discussions on websites.
Companies use Jive Forums for a variety of purposes, such as support
communities, e-learning environments and internal collaboration
environments. Today's enterprises are gaining competitive advantage and
realizing increased productivity by deploying an enterprise portal
within their IT infrastructure. Enterprise portals are specifically
designed to be the single source of interaction with corporate
information and the focal point for conducting day-to-day
business. OracleAS Portal - a component of Oracle Application
Server - is a complete and integrated solution for building, deploying,
and maintaining a world-class enterprise portal.
For recent updates to these installation instructions
and other
OracleAS Portal documentation, please refer to the Oracle Technology
Network (OTN)
Portal Center.
You can find valuable information related to the OracleAS Provider for
Jive
Forums in the 'Portal - Portal Development Kit' Discussion
Forum on OTN.
"NOTE: The OracleAS Provider for
Jive
Forums is a sample released for test, evaluation, and education
purposes. It is
not supported through formal Oracle Support mechanisms. We are,
however, very
interested in receiving your feedback. Please post any
suggestions,
questions, or issues to the 'Portal - Portal Development Kit' Discussion
Forum on OTN. We will respond as quickly as possible."
File Structure
Contents of
OracleASProviderForJiveForums.zip
To begin the installation process
you first need to unzip the file called OracleASProviderForJiveForums.zip
into a directory located on the
same machine as your Oracle Application Server or OC4J instance.
Unzipping
OracleASProviderForJiveForums.zip
creates the following directory
structure:
| OracleASProviderForJiveForums.zip
|
|
|
|-> portlets.zip
|
zip file containing the provider
|
|
|
Instructions for registering Jive
Forums as an external application with OracleAS Portal, and how to
register the provider with your portal. |
|
|
Instructions for configuring Jive
Forums to leverage Oracle Identity Management for maintaining the user
credentials, and how to register the provider with your portal. |
|
|-> installation.html
|
This Installation instructions file
|
|
|
Details
about the compatibility matrix for the OracleAS Provider for Jive
Forums.
|
Contents of portlets.zip
The portlets.zip file, within
the
OracleASProviderForJiveForums.zip
(as shown in the above
table), contains the provider and portlets details, which needs to be
deployed to the Jive Forum Application's web-archive. It conforms
to the following directory structure:
portlets.zip
|-> htdocs
|-> images
|->
WEB-INF
|->
deployment
|-> lib
Installing the OracleAS Provider for Jive
Forums
Installation
of the OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums involves deploying the
provider,
then configuring it to work with your portal, and then registering the
provider
with your Portal.
The steps for installing the
OracleAS
Provider for Jive Forums differ depending on the environment you are
installing
to:
- Jive Forum Deployed on an
OracleAS Instance
If your Jive Forum application is deployed on OracleAS under one of the
OC4J instances (like OC4J_Jive).
Note: Neither Jive Forums nor
the OracleAS
Provider for Jive Forums should be installed in the
OC4J_Portal instance.
- Jive Forum Deployed on a
standalone OC4J Instance
If your Jive Forum application is deployed on a stand alone OC4J
instance.
Before beginning the installation of
the
OracleAS Provider for Jive Forums please ensure you have completed the
PDK-Java installation and configuration. You can verify that
PDK-Java is configured within the same
instance of a standalone OC4J as the Jive Forums application by running
the Provider test page URL, for example http://{server}:{port}/jpdk/providers/sample.
If this URL shows up the list of all sample portlets, your PDK-Java
setup is fine. If not, please follow
this link Installing the PDK-Java Framework and Sample Providers
that explains configuring PDK-Java on different combinations of OC4J
instances.
If you have deployed Jive
Forums on
an Oracle Application Server instance using one of the preconfigured
OC4J instances, then it cannot be verified with a URL. This is
because these OC4J instances run on an AJP protocol
that only mod_oc4j (under Apache) can
communicate with. So, you need to manually check the directory
structure
and files to verify if its deployed. You can perform the
following steps to find the PDK-Java setup:
1. Go to the required OC4J
instance
under the Oracle Application Server $IAS_HOME/j2ee/<OC4J_Instance>/config
where <OC4J_Instance>
is
the OC4J instance where Jive
Forum is
installed.
2. Open the application.xml file and
check for the following 2 library entries
<library path="../../../portal/jlib/pdkjava.jar"/>
<library path="../../../portal/jlib/ptlshare.jar"/>
3. If the above entries are available, then the
PDK-Java is configured, otherwise please setup PDK-Java following
the instructions as per Installing the PDK-Java Framework and Sample Providers
document.
Note: Remember to install
PDK-Java in the same <OC4J_Instance>
instance where Jive Forum is installed.
Deploying the OracleAS Provider for Jive
Forums
The portlets.zip
file contains the files required for deploying the OracleAS Provider
for Jive Forums onto your Oracle Application Server. This zip file
needs to be extracted in to the Jive web-archive, so that the provider
can leverage the Jive Forums functionality. Thus, if your Jive Forum
application deployment structure is as follows (OC4J_Instance either
within OracleAS or a Standalone OC4J instance):
| <OC4J_Instance> |
|
|
|-> applications
|
|
|
|->jive4
|
the
application archive (optional)
|
|
|-> jive4
|
the web
archive (the directory to extract to)
|
|
|->admin/
|->help/
|->images/
etc.
|
all the
jive specific directories
|
Extract the content of the portlets.zip
file to the jive4 web
archive directory (marked in bold
red in the above
table).
Configuring the
OracleAS Provider For Jive Forums
In order to enable the provider, the web.xml
file located under <OC4J_Instance>/applications/jive4/jive4/WEB-INF/
needs to be modified to add the following entries.
<servlet>
<servlet-name>SOAPServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>oracle.webdb.provider.v2.adapter.SOAPServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>JiveLogin</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>oracle.webdb.ohs.forum.portlet.ExternalAppLoginServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>JiveLogin</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/extAppLogin</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>SOAPServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/providers</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>SOAPServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/providers/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Add the following entry to your <OC4J_Instance>/applications/jive4/jive4/WEB-INF/templates.xml
within the <excludes>
tag.
<pattern>/htdocs/*</pattern>
Restart your <OC4J_Instance>
after making the modifications.
Testing the Deployment
If the deployment and configuration went through successfully, then
you
should be able to access the provider page, at http://<host>:<port>/<jiveContext>/providers/forum,
which would give you a list of all the available portlets. If any
errors occur, then check your JPDK installation again and retry the
install.
Note:
If your Jive Home url looks like http://my.company.com/jive4
then your provider url would be http://my.company.com/jive4/providers/forum
Publishing the
OracleAS Provider For Jive Forums
In order to provide seamless integration between Jive Forums and
OracleAS Portal, a single
entry point needs to be provided, so that users do not need to
authenticate against the Jive
Forums application once he has authenticated against OracleAS Portal.
The steps involved depend upon whether your Jive Forums
are deployed on an OracleAS instance, whether it is deployed on a
standalone OC4J instance, or whether it is the Professional Edition.
Jive Forums Deployed on an OracleAS Instance (Jive Forum Enterprise
Editions & Jive Forums Expert Editions)
If your Jive Forums Application is deployed on the OracleAS instance,
then it
is possible to leverage Single Sign-On features by delegating the
authentication function to the mod_osso module (an authentication
module on the Oracle HTTP server). In
order to leverage this functionality you will also need to configure
Jive Forums to leverage Oracle Identity Management for maintaining the
user credentials. For further details, see Configuring
Jive Forums using Oracle Application Server Identity Management.
Note:
Jive Forum Professional Editions need to be configured as External
Applications, since they do not support LDAP based authentication.
Jive Forums Deployed on a standalone OC4J Instance or Jive Forums
Professional Edition
If your Jive Forums Application is deployed on a stand alone OC4J
instance or you are using Jive Forums Professional Edition,
then Single Sign-On can be achieved by registering Jive Forums as
an External Application with OracleAS Portal. For further details, see Configuring
Jive Forums as an External Application.
Trademarks
Oracle and the Oracle logo are
trademarks or registered
trademarks of Oracle Corporation in the United States and other
countries.
Jive Software and the Jive logo are trademarks or
registered trademarks of
Jive Software in the United States and other countries.
All other names are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of their
respective owners.
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