SAP Netweaver Corner

Here is a general workflow list specify the tasks of implementing External Facing Portal:

1) Define User Profiles:
Set up the portal to accept anonymous users, and define the users and groups to which anonymous and self-registered users are mapped.

2) Create and Assign Content to Anonymous/Self-Registered Users:
Select the content to be accessible to anonymous and self-registered users, and then assign these

3) Configure Navigation Cache:
To improve performance, the portal caches navigation hierarchies and nodes, so that the portal can retrieve the hierarchy from the cache instead of creating it for each request.

By default, caching is turned off. After the portal is set up and tested, turn on and configure caching by setting the appropriate J2EE parameters.

4) Create/Modify Navigation iViews:
Create your own navigation iViews, or modify the default light navigation iViews to fit your company’s needs. You can use the Navigation tag library to build JSP-based navigation iViews.

5) Modify the Light Framework Page:
Replace the navigation iViews in the light framework page with your customized navigation iViews.

6) Customize Styles in Theme Editor (optional):
The Theme Editor now includes styles that are used in the default light navigation iViews.

7) Assign Light Framework Page to Users/Groups/Roles:
Using desktop display rules, assign the light framework page to anonymous and self-registered users, as well as other users who need it.

Display rules enable administrators to assign different desktops to different users or groups of users. Desktops are combinations of framework pages and themes.

You can assign desktops based on the URL alias, role or group, or the user’s network bandwidth.

The following rules are needed:

Light Desktop:
By default, all users receive the default desktop, which includes the default framework page. Create a rule that provides the light desktop to users who need it.
For example, you could create a rule that provides the light desktop for anyone who accesses the portal with the light alias, as in http://myServer:50000/irj/portal/

Default Desktop:
Create a rule that provides the default desktop to users who need it.

For example, you could create a rule that provides the default desktop for anyone who accesses the portal with the default alias, as in http://myServer:50000/irj/portal/default. You could also create a rule that provides the default desktop for anyone in a specific group.

For more details, please refer to SAP Help Library.

Labels: External Facing Portal, Portal

One of the nice feature of improving performance of the External Facing Portal is “Navigation Caching”. We can cache the navigation hierarchy and nodes of the user so that the same node loaded by other users will be not be reloaded from the server, this will significantly improve the performance, especially for most of the users that using the same workset or navigation hierarchy.

Another word, Navigation Cache is to improve performance on the server-side. By saving the Navigation Nodes in memory, the number of calls to the PCD or any other backend systems are reduced.When the user launch the framework page, the portal can take the navigation hierarchy from the cache instead of creating it from scratch.The cache is implemented in a First in - First out manner (FIFO).

Navigation caching works in the background, and there's not much you have to do -- except turn it on!!

You can configure the portal navigation caching by using SAP J2EE Visual Administrator tool. After you have connected to VA tool, go to Clusterà Services à com.sap.portal.prt.sapj2ee, then look for the following properties:

• Whether navigation caching is turned on (portal.navigation.cache.enable)
• The maximum size of the navigation cache (portal.navigation.cache.lifetime)
• For how long each object is valid (portal.navigation.cache.maxsize)

Labels: External Facing Portal, Portal

Since Netweaver 04, the new Service Pack has provides a very nice features to improve the navigation in the portal. More and more companies start to implement External Facing Portal.

There are two navigation methods are very useful when we implement External Facing Portal, there are Short URLs and Quick Links.
Before these two navigation methods, we used to implement Absolute Navigation and Relative Navigation links to navigate portal pages and iviews among the navigation nodes.
One of the draw back of using these navigation methods are the navigation path is usually getting so long that it may cause more times to load the page, especially when we try to implement a light-weight navigation framework for out external portal. Also there is a limitation to the length of URLs, the long URL can lead to loading problem.

Now, we can use Short URLs and Quick Links to improve this problem.

I wrote a forum post about the SDN last week and get some good inputs from some members.

Here I would like to make some summary on these two navigation methods.
The portal supports navigation based on short URLs (also called Hashed URLs, as the navigation service actually put the long URL into a has table and assign a hash key for it). Instead of a URL such as the following:
http://myServer:50000/irj/portal?NavigationTarget=
ROLES://portal_content/administrator/super_admin/super_admin_role
/com.sap.portal.system_administration/com.sap.portal.system_admin_ws/com.sap.portal.permissions
the portal creates another URL for the same navigation target such as the following:
http://myServer:50000/irj/portal?NavigationTarget=
navurl://0c3c7ac0dfe1083d8f50ae954b8ec25f
(Note: 0c3c7ac0dfe1083d8f50ae954b8ec25f is the hash key in the hash table where the long URL assigned to.)

An administrator can turn this feature on, and then the navigation service creates hashed URLs for all navigation nodes. All links created by the navigation service are generated as hashed URLs and not as the original URL.
Also, the portal enables users to navigate to a specific node by entering the portal’s base address followed by a short string, or quick link.
For nodes defined by the roles connector, a portal administrator can assign quick links to a node by setting the Quick Link property of the iView or page associated with the node.

The quick link is for end users to get to a specific location quickly - it is a user friendly way to navigate. The short URL is mainly to prevent incredibly long URLs appearing all over the place.
In order to use the Short URL's you need to
1. Set the "Use Short URLs" property to "TRUE". This is done from System Administration -> Navigation -> Short URL's
2. View the iViews at least once from the portal, so that a short URL is generated before you can use the Short URL.

Where as in the case of the Quick URL, we need to add a value to the "Quick Link" property associated with the iView.

We usually use the Short URLs in an External Facing portal scenario, while we use Quick Links in the normal Portal scenario.

When you use Short URLs a unique short URL id is created for the iViews. No duplication of values for Short URLs.
In case of Quick Links nothing prevents you from creating a duplicate quick link. If one quick link string is defined for two navigation nodes, the first node in the user’s navigation tree is displayed.

I personally think that these navigation methods make the portal navigation like the regular websites, and it provides more efficient navigation and more user-friendly, in the sense that we don’t have to track the long URL in the web browser. It may also provides more security for the portal, since the actual portal navigation path is not shown in the browser URL field.

Labels: External Facing Portal, Portal

The following portal features are relevant to developers when implementing an external-facing portal:

1) Light Framework Page
This includes a light navigation iViews that do not use HTMLB or client-side eventing (EPCM) ,and heavy loaded JavaScript.This will significantly reduces the resources required for rendering the page.

It also renders the portal in a single frame, which enables Web-like behavior. This will eliminate using Client Side Eventing to communicate between frames, and preventing using a lot of Java Script function.

2) Resource-Sensitive Page Builder
You can specify an iVIew whether it need to load unnnecessary javascript by specifying "EPCFLevel" property in the iview.
The property can have the following values:
● 0: This component does not use EPCF. Neither scripts nor applets are included.
● 1: This component uses all EPCF features implemented with pure JavaScript.
● 2: This component uses all EPCF features implemented with pure JavaScript and applets.
For the light weight page, it will be set to "0".

3) JSP Tag Libraries
Here is a list of JSP Tags released by SAP for developer to customize layouts when they implementing External Facing Portal:

• Navigation Tag Library: Enables you to develop iViews that access the current user’s navigation hierarchy. The tag library is generally used for top-level and detailed navigation iViews.
• Framework Tag Library: Enables the creation of links for various portal functions, such as logging off or personalizing the portal. The tag library is generally used for masthead and page title bar iViews.
• Layout Tag Library: Enables you to develop page layouts, and to develop custom iView trays.

Labels: External Facing Portal, Portal

Starting with the SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP14 Portal and the portal capabilities of SAP NetWeaver 2004s SPS6, the SAP NetWeaver portal offering was extended to provide support for external facing portal (EFP) implementations.

Here are some enhanced features provided by EFP:

• a new light framework page,
• an enhanced server cache,
• navigation features targeted for EFP implementations,
• tag libraries for creating and adapting navigation iViews, documentation ,and best practices for EFP implementation,

This allow us to implement a .com portal much faster and easier.

You can visit to Wyeth.Com (http://www.wyeth.com) that implemented with EFP technology.

Labels: External Facing Portal, Portal