Oracle Applications DBA Blog

Oracle Portal

Continuing with the series of Oracle Applications Server integration, today i shall discuss about Oracle Portal and Integrating Portal with Oracle Applications.

A portal is a web based implementation of content management which allows the enterprise to effectively manage content  without having to make use of complex programming tools. There have been various implementation of Portals by various third parties. But In this post i shall limit the discussion to Oracle's implementation of Portal.

Oracle Allows a out of box portal solution as a part of its Fusion Middleware bundled with 10g Oracle Application Server. Oracle Portal lets the enterprise employ a single portal framework to manage Organization’s entire Web presence. It is based in the Oracle's implementation of J2EE containers or Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J).

Besides providing standard functionalities of a enterprise portal Oracle Portal also allows integration with the E-Business suite enabling organizations to provide dynamic content to employees, Partners and vendors. This integration with enterprise  applications extends itself to non Oracle Applications like SAP also.

Other Benefits of Oracle Portal Include

Single Sign On
Ability to implement Single Sign On by integrating with Oracle Internet Directory.

Business Intelligence
Oracle Portal offer in built portlets which can be used with Other Oracle Business Intelligence tools like Discoverer.

Business Process
Oracle Portal also offers interaction with the business process engineering tools like BEPL.

Desktop Publishing
Apart from the dynamic content and integration with other enterprise applications Oracle Portal also allows for convenient publishing of content through the desktop.

Custom Development
Oracle Portal also comes with an inbuilt Portal Development Kit (PDK) which allows developer to do custom development.

SOA Enabler
Organizations that aim at implementing a Service Oriented Architecture(SOA) require there applications to be bound together in a secure portal framework. Oracle Portal helps them archive this.

As mentioned earlier Oracle Portal is a component of the 10g Application Server. It is installed as a part of the Middle Tier  components of the 10g Application Server. As a result you must have a Oracle Applications Server Infrastructure installed first before going ahead with the installation of Oracle Portal.

The latest release of Oracle Portal is 10.1.4, though the Portal which comes with Oracle Application server 10.1.2.0.2 is discussed in this post.

Portal Integration With Oracle Applications

This kind of integration allows access to Ebusiness suite protlets from within Oracle Portal. A link to E Business suite is  created when we register Oracle Applications as a partner application with Oracle Portal.

Architecture Configuration

Oracle Applications 11.5.10.2 (With ATG RUP 4)
Oracle Applications 10g 10.1.2.0.2
Redhat Linux AS 4
Oracle Applications HTTP Port 8032
Oracle Application Server Infrastructure Port 7777
Oracle Application Server Middle Tier Port 7778
OS Applications user applsam
OS Database User orasam
10g Application Server Infrastructure OS user asinf
10g Application Server Middle Tier OS user asmid

Pre Requisites

This post assumes the following configurations have been successfully setup.

E-Business suite 11.5.10.2 has been setup
Oracle Applications Server 10.1.2.0.2 Infrastructure and Middle Tier is Installed (With Portal)
10g Application Server Integrated with Oracle Applications and Single Sign On Implemented

Check Portal Setup
Check the setup and configuration of your portal by logging in to the portal url

http://<hostname>.<domain>:<port>/pls/portal

orcladmin is the super user for portal you can login with user to see that the portal admin screen.

Apply Patch 3418272
This patch has to be applied on your E-Business Suite with your ORACLE_HOME set to your IAS ORACLE_HOME.To do set the environment correctly source the SID_hostname.env located in your IAS Home of your E-Business Suite. The patch has two scripts namely  c3418272.csh and d3418272.csh you only need to apply the first script that is c3418272.csh.

Apply Compatibility patch 3615177
This patch is also applied to your IAS_ORACLE_HOME. Again your need to source the SID_hostname.env located in your IAS Home of your Ebusiness suite for to get the environment correct.

Apply patch  4585791
This patch is to be applied to your Portal home that is your Oracle Applications Server Middle Tier home. The patch is  applied by OPatch. It is advisable to have the latest OPatch installed in your ORACLE_HOME before you apply this patch.

#su - asmid
$cd $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch
$./opatch apply -silent /u01/4585791 -pre -s portal -p TyOQH8Ax -c samlnx:1521:samasdb.appsdbablog.com

You can get the portal password by running the ldapsearch script on your Infrastructure

ldapsearch -h samlnx.appsdbablog.com -p 389 -D "cn=orcladmin" -w test123 -b "cn=IAS,cn=Products,cn=OracleContext" -s sub -v 
"OrclresourceName=portal"| grep orclpasswordattribute

Apply Patch 5378265
Apply this patch on your E-Business Suite using adpatch.

Change the Cookie Domain
Change the Cookie Domain to conatin the last last two letters of the value mentioned in the APPS_WEB_AGENT.In our case in should contain .appsdbablog.com. Make this change from the Oracle Applications Manager (OAM).

Comment for topleveldomain
Remove the comment in from topleveldomain variable from Oracle Applications manager.

OProcMgr Trusted Nodes
In case you have your Oracle Application server on a different host then make sure you add the entry for this host also in the OProcMgr Trusted Nodes through OAM.

Run Autoconfig
Run autoconfig on your application tier so that the changes get reflect across the system. Bounce your Apache Server to have the chages take effect.

Register E-Business Suite Framework
Go to the portal page using
http://<AS10g_hostname>:<AS10g_app_tier_portnumber>/pls/portal
Login as orcladmin user and navigate to Administer" tab -> "Portlets" region -> "Register a Provider" link

You need to fill in the details as required and register  Oracle Applications with the following URL
http://[Release_11i_host]:[port]/servlet/framework
Attempting to access this URL from your desktop may result in an access denied message but you can ignore it and proceed with  the registration.You might get a cookie related warning post registeration which also can be ignored.

Once registered a link to the Oracle Applications Framework with a list of Oracle Applications Portlets will be accessible from your portal.



Additional References
Using Oracle Portal 10g with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Note:305918.1