Webcenter Portal vs Webcenter Spaces

Confusion – Webcenter Portal vs Webcenter Spaces , which one to choose and when.

Webcenter Spaces- WebCenter Spaces is designed to provide a collaborative environment. It integrates all the necessary services such as documents, discussions, events, linking, tagging.In WebCenter Spaces, you build group spaces. Each space is a separate mini-portal with its own configuration, look and feel, security model, and services.

Well one thing is sure.both is fine and works well.But you need to choose in cost,learning,effrot and what you really need it.WebCenter Spaces is ideal to build intranets where you have to collaborate a lot with other.WebCenter Spaces also has a rich set of features for social networking. It has Facebook-like features: you can invite other people to your network, write on their wall, and so on.Oracle WebCenter Spaces allows users to work more effectively with project teams and work groups, including teams that span multiple geographies and include external members. It eliminates or reduces duplication of efforts and content inconsistencies, and it enables sharing valuable team resources to solve business problems, tap into new ideas, and reduce time to market.You can add services, portal,custom taskflow etc.

Webcenter portal –
Oracle WebCenter Portal delivers intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications. This complete, open and integrated enterprise portal and composite applications solution enables the development and deployment of internal and external portals and websites, composite applications and mashups with integrated social and collaboration services and enterprise content management capabilities

Choose Webcenter Spaces if –

-If you don’t need much customization , then choose spaces.It require less effort and development.
-When you require different group spaces, you will also go for WebCenter spaces because such a concept is very hard to build for yourself.
– If your need is something that is more ‘social and collaborative’, then Spaces may be the best place to start.
– You can enable and disable some of the spaces.
– It is role based access.
– When you need people connection like linkedin, facebook like button,personal pages.You can comment, favorite,discussion,event etc – Spaces is best option.

Choose Webcenter Portal if –

– If customization is there.Portal is best.
– You have full control over it.
– More effort required to develop personel pages and space.

Except these points, it also depend on your resources skills, time constraint and architect choice as well 🙂

When you need a high level of customization or you need to extend the site with your custom functionality, then you should create a WebCenter Portal application. When you need a collaborative environment where customization or added functionality is not as important as the collaborative services, then go for WebCenter Spaces.

happy coding with Vinay in techartifact . 🙂

generate the secure files in weblogic in Webcenter Spaces Applicaton

For security purposes, administrator user name and password details are stored in secure files.Obtain the location of these secure files from your systems administrator or generate the secure files in weblogic.
How to do that. lets find it out.

I am working on portal and spaces application.For deploying spaces application in console ,i need a secure file.Following are the steps to generate.

1. Navigate to: ORACLE_HOME/common/bin in command prompt using CD command.

2. Enter the command:
wlst.sh – for unix.
wlst.cmd – for windows.

3. At the WLST command prompt, connect to the Administration Server for Oracle WebCenter:

connect(‘‘,’‘, ‘:‘) Where admin_user is the user name of the administrator, admin_pwd is the administrator’s password, host is the WebCenter instance, and port is the Administration Server port. This is used for connecting with weblogic using command prompt. i.e

connect(‘weblogic ‘,’welcome1’, ‘192.168.0.93:8888’)

4. Run the following command to create a user configuration file and key file in a specified location:

storeUserConfig(‘‘, ‘) Where userConfigFile is the name and location of the file storing user details and userKeyFile is the name and location of the file storing passwords.

For example: storeUserConfig(‘C:/myFiles/myuserconfigfile.secure’, ‘C:/myFiles/myuserkeyfile.secure’)

you can map the entry of these files in config.properties in spaces application to deploy shared library like below

wls.userkey=C:\\JDeveloper\\mywork\\ps1userkeyfile.secure
wls.userconfig=C:\\JDeveloper\\mywork\\ps1userconfigfile.secure

Thats it. You can find the secure files in specified path.

Happy coding with Vinay in Techartifact…..

WebCenter PS6 (11.1.1.7) Released

Version PS6 (11.1.1.7) of WebCenter has been released on 1st of April, 2013.Don’t know why they choose april fool day. PS6 includes many bug fixes in addition to enhancements to the WebCenter Content Application Extension Framework (AXF) supporting integrations with E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft.A rundown of the new Jdev 11.1.1.7.0 Enhancements can be seen here

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/index-088099.html

There will be one major version 11.1.1.8.0 (PS7) of WebCenter by end of 2013. In this release, following are some highlights I learned from Oracle:-

1. there is no more two solutions (Spaces & Portal) for WebCenter. Spaces will be the part of WebCenter Framework. Only one concept that is PORTAL.

2. We can create multiple portal from Web Interface.

3. You can import/export portal archive (PAR exactly like JAR/WAR/MAR) from/to Web to/from JDeveloper for complex customization.

4. All types of popup windows will be eliminated from portal.

5. You can drag and drop Web 2.0 components and taskflows on to the page from resource catalogue.

6. Migration among different environments is easy due to PAR.