10 Managing Oracle WebCenter Services

This chapter provides an overview of managing Oracle WebCenter services in WebCenter applications. It also describes how to configure and manage the WebCenter and MDS repositories.

This chapter includes the following sections:

Section 10.1, "Introduction to Managing Services"
Section 10.2, "Setting Up the WebCenter Repository"
Section 10.3, "Setting Up the MDS Repository"

Audience

The content of this chapter is intended for Fusion Middleware administrators (users granted the Admin or Operator role through the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console). For more information, see Section 1.8, "Understanding Administrative Operations, Roles, and Tools."

10.1 Introduction to Managing Services

WebCenter exposes collaborative, social networking, and personal productivity features through services, which, in turn, expose subsets of their features and functionality through task flows. Task flows provide reusable functionality that may expose all or a subset of the features available from a particular service.

Services provide a variety of functionality in support of personal and team objectives. For example, the Documents service provides features for uploading and managing content. The Discussions service provides features for creating, managing, and participating in discussion forums.

Always use Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST command-line tool to review and configure back-end services for WebCenter applications. Any changes that you make to WebCenter applications, post deployment, are stored in the MDS metatdata store as customizations. For more information, see Section 1.3.5, "Oracle WebCenter Configuration Considerations."

Note:

Most changes that you make to WebCenter services configuration, through Fusion Middleware Control or using WLST, are not dynamic so you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is deployed for your changes to take effect. For more information, see Section 8.2, "Starting and Stopping Managed Servers for WebCenter Application Deployments."

10.2 Setting Up the WebCenter Repository

Many WebCenter services (including Activity Stream, Blogs, Lists, People Connections, Polls, and Tags) store information in the WebCenter repository, which is a database with the WebCenter schema installed. For example, with the Links service, relationship mapping information, such as what object is linked to what other object, is stored in the database. The WebCenter schema is included with the product.

For WebCenter Portal applications, you must set up a database connection to the WebCenter repository. This database connection can be of type JDBC Data Source or JDBC URL.

Note:

For WebCenter Spaces, a WebCenter repository is configured out-of-the-box, and therefore, the repository connection does not require reconfiguration.

See Also:

"Setting Up a Database Connection" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter for information on creating the connection and installing the schema
Section 7.1.5, "Deploying the Application to a WebLogic Managed Server" for data source considerations when deploying your application to a production environment
Chapter 37, "Managing Export, Import, Backup, and Recovery of WebCenter" for information on backing up and migrating this information

Depending on the connection type used in an application, do one of the following:

Create a global data source, if the application does not include an application-level data source with password indirection. For information on creating global data sources, see the section, "Creating a JDBC Data Source" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JDBC for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Map the connection credentials, if the application uses an application-level data source with password indirection. The password is set through the Oracle WebLogic Administration Console on the Credential Mappings tab under Security. If you change the password for an indirect data source on the Connection Pool tab under Configuration, then it has no effect. For more information on credential mapping, see "JDBC Data Sources: Security: Credential Mapping" under the section "Creating a JDBC Data Source" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JDBC for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Merge the information stored in application credential store with that of the global application store, if the application uses a JDBC URL connection. For more information on credential migration behavior, see the section, "Configuring the Credential Store" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Security Guide.

In a typical business scenario, applications are deployed to different managed servers, and multiple databases are used as repositories for the applications. The repository that you use in a development environment is different from that in a production environment, and therefore, when migrating WebCenter Portal applications from development to production, you must reconfigure the database connection.

When a repository connection is reconfigured, the local datasource file and the *-jdbc.xml file in the WEB-INF directory of the WAR file are updated with the new connection details. However, the JNDI Name and data source name remain the same. If you change the JNDI Name for any reason, then you must also update the adf-config.xml file. The JNDI name must be of the form jdbc/connection-nameDS. For example, if the application has a connection name connection1, then the JNDI name is jdbc/connection1DS.

10.3 Setting Up the MDS Repository

Some WebCenter services, such as Notes, RSS News Feed, Recent Activities, Worklist, Lists, Events, Search, Page, and Mail store information in the MDS repository. To enable these services in WebCenter applications you must configure the MDS repository. For information, see Section 7.1.4, "Creating and Registering the Metadata Service Repository."