18.1 When to Use Which WebDAV Client with Oracle Portal

You'll find support for WebDAV in Java clients (such as DAV Explorer), open source tools (such as Cadaver and Sitecopy), Apple GUI tools (such as Goliath), and commercial authoring tools (such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop).

Different situations respond optimally to different tools, for example:

• Oracle Drive is a powerful WebDAV client that maps the Portal schema in the MDS Repository as a drive and enables you to perform desktop authoring and publishing and portal-specific metadata attribution directly from the Windows desktop.

  Unlike with other WebDAV clients, with Oracle Drive you can use any Microsoft application, including Notepad, to edit and view portal content—not just those enabled for WebDAV.

  Oracle Drive provides extended menu options that enable you to jump straight into the context of the portal user interface to carry out the selected menu action.

  You can use Oracle Drive with Oracle Portal 9.0.4.1 or later. No additional configuration is required on the Oracle Fusion Middleware middle tier, infrastructure, or Metadata Repository.

• Microsoft Web Folders is available out-of-the-box in Windows. It is useful to portal content contributors. Web Folders enables users to map the Portal schema in the MDS Repository like a Windows drive, edit documents in-place with WebDAV-compliant applications, and save them directly to the Portal schema in the MDS Repository. Because the Portal schema in the MDS Repository displays as a folder hierarchy in Windows Explorer, users can perform common content-contributor tasks, such as copy, move, or delete file, without any additional knowledge.

  For more information about using Web Folders or Network Places, see Section 18.6, "Using Web Folders as a WebDAV Client".

• Cadaver is similar to an FTP or telnet client. Use commands like put and get to upload and download files. You can copy, move, and delete content just as you would using telnet. Cadaver is available on the UNIX operating system.

  For more information about Cadaver, see Section 18.7, "Using Cadaver as a WebDAV Client".

• Sitecopy is ideal for performing script-based bulk operations on the Portal schema in the MDS Repository. You can replicate file system directory structures to Oracle Portal and portal page structures to the file system. Choose Sitecopy if you plan to replicate other WebDAV-compliant repositories into the Portal schema in the MDS Repository automatically.

  Use Sitecopy to move hundreds or even thousands of files from a file system or external repository into a Portal schema in the MDS Repository. Sitecopy can greatly improve transfer efficiency for one-time bulk copy and move operations of large file volumes or periodic copy and move operations between source repositories and Portal Repositories.

  For more information about Sitecopy, see Section 18.8, "Using Sitecopy as a WebDAV Client".