3 Installing OracleAS Portal

This chapter provides a brief overview of the installation process and describes a few things you need to know about installing OracleAS Portal that are not covered in the Oracle Application Server 10g Installation Guide. This chapter contains the following sections:

How Does the Installation Process Work?
What Is Installed By Default?
Configuring OracleAS Portal During and After Installation

If you are planning to upgrade OracleAS Portal from a previous release, you’ll need to refer to the Upgrade documentation on Portal Center, http://portalcenter.oracle.com/upgrades/.

3.1 How Does the Installation Process Work?

To install OracleAS Portal:

Read the Release Notes and the Release Notes Addendum for any late breaking changes that might affect your installation.
Check that you meet the Oracle Application Server requirements.

Choose a topology. For the recommended topologies that help illustrate the flexibility of Oracle Application Server, see Table 3-1. For complete instructions on how to install and configure the infrastructure and the middle-tier in different topologies, refer to the Oracle Application Server 10g Installation Guide.

Table 3-1 Recommended Topologies

Topology	Environment	Requires Infrastructure?	Portal Included?
Java Developer Topology	Development	No	No
Portal and Wireless Developer Topology	Development	Yes	Yes
Forms, Reports, and Discoverer Developer Topology	Development	Yes	No
Integration Architect and Process Modeler Topology	Development	Yes	No
Departmental Topology	Deployment	Yes	Yes
Enterprise Data Center Topology: J2EE Applications	Deployment	Yes	No
Enterprise Data Center Topology: Portal, Wireless, and Business Intelligence Applications	Deployment	Yes	Yes
Development Life Cycle Support Topology	Development and Deployment	N/a	No
OracleAS Certificate Authority Topology	Deployment	Yes	No

Install the Oracle Application Server Infrastructure using the Oracle Installer. You can follow the steps to install an infrastructure with a new Oracle9i Database Server, which you’ll need to house the Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository, or you can install the OracleAS Metadata Repository into an existing database. The procedure also installs a new Oracle Internet Directory.

Note:

If you plan to install the OracleAS Metadata Repository, including the OracleAS Portal schema, in an existing database, you need to run the Oracle Application Server Repository Creation Assistant tool (RepCA), available on the "Oracle Application Server Repository Creation Assistant" CD-ROM, to populate the existing database with the OracleAS Metadata Repository. You must do this before running the installer to install other Oracle Application Server components. Refer to the Oracle Application Server 10g Installation Guide for more information.

The Oracle Application Server 10g Installation Guide tells you how to start the Installer, what command-line options are available, and provides step-by-step procedures. If you need multiple Oracle Application Server instances, you must run the Installer multiple times, once for each Oracle Application Server instance.

Install the Portal middle-tier, also using the Oracle Installer. You deploy and run your applications, including OracleAS Portal, on Oracle Application Server middle-tiers. Instructions for installing the middle-tier are also in the Oracle Application Server 10g Installation Guide.

Note:

The OracleAS Portal online help system, which uses Oracle Help for the Web, relies on certain fonts to render the Online Help User Interface in different languages. To get the correct fonts installed, you must select all the languages in which you want to render the online help at installation time. To do this, click the Product Languages button, and select your languages on the Select a Product to Install screen, during the installation.

Additionally, you must make sure that the languages that are installed on the Application Server middle-tier correspond with the languages that are installed on the Application Server Infrastructure, to avoid problems with the Set Language request issued to the OracleAS Single Sign-On server. See Section B.2.3, "LANGUAGE" for more details.

Installing all languages increases the time required for the middle-tier installation.

Figure 3-1 Installation Overview

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After you install Oracle Application Server, go to the Oracle Application Server page at http://hostname.domain:7777 (7777 is the default port number used during installation). Here you can view the documentation library, take the Quick Tour, and run some demos. To run the demos, click the Demonstrations tab then select Portal and Wireless from the Navigation panel.

Access OracleAS Portal by entering the following URL in your browser:

http://<hostname>:<portnumber>/pls/<dad>

The Portal Builder page is displayed as shown in Figure 3-2.

Figure 3-2 Portal Builder Page

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The following table explains the components that make up the URL used to access OracleAS Portal.

Table 3-2 Portal URL Descriptions

Parameter	Description
`hostname`	Defines the machine on which you installed OracleAS Portal. Enter both the hostname and the fully qualified domain name. For example, enter host.domain.com. This name must also match the `ServerName` parameter in the configuration file, `httpd.conf`, located in: `ORACLE_HOME``/Apache/Apache/conf`
`port number`	Defines the port number you specified earlier to access OracleAS Portal.
`pls`	Defines the virtual path and indicates that the request is for a PL/SQL procedure which alerts the Oracle HTTP Server to reroute the request to mod_plsql.
`dad`	Defines the Database Access Descriptor (DAD) you specified earlier for your OracleAS Portal installation. The DAD contains information on how to connect to the database. By default the DAD is 'portal'.

Click the Login link, located in the top right corner:

Figure 3-3 Login Screen

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Note:

Portal creates its users in Oracle Internet Directory only once, based on the Portal schema in the Application Server Metadata Repository. Subsequent middle-tier installations that use the services of the same Portal schema in the Application Server Metadata Repository do not create or update users in Oracle Internet Directory. Therefore, the portal password is the ias_admin password of the first middle-tier that uses the services of the Application Server Metadata Repository.

Figure 3-4 Sign In Screen

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After you have verified that OracleAS Portal is up and running, by logging in, you can run the OracleAS Portal Diagnostic Assistant (PDA) and view the generated reports for additional verification. Refer to Section 13.5, "Using the OracleAS Portal Diagnostics Assistant" for instructions on how to run the PDA.

3.2 What Is Installed By Default?

When you install OracleAS Portal, some default database schemas and user accounts are also installed. It’s a good idea to take the time to familiarize yourself with these defaults.

The default database schemas are described in Section 6.3.1, "Configuring OracleAS Portal Security Options" in Chapter 6, " Securing OracleAS Portal ".

See Also:
Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On Administrator's Guide
The OracleAS Portal default user accounts and groups are described in Section 6.1.2.1, "OracleAS Portal Default, Seeded User Accounts" and Section 6.1.2.2, "OracleAS Portal Default, Seeded Groups".

The installation of the OracleAS Metadata Repository component of Oracle Application Server 10g creates a new database and populates it with a collection of schemas used by Oracle Application Server components, such as the OracleAS Portal metadata schema.

Out of the box, the initialization parameters for this new database are suitable for a very small OracleAS Portal configuration with few users. If you plan to use OracleAS Portal, it is recommended that you modify the initialization parameters for the database based on the requirements for installing the OracleAS Metadata Repository in an existing database, using the settings specified in the Oracle Application Server 10g Installation Guide. As you make changes in your configuration, you may need to further tune the initialization parameters based on the size of your configuration, and the number of simultaneous users of OracleAS Portal. The init.ora file can be found in the database’s ORACLE_HOME. If init.ora is modified, the database must be restarted for this change to take effect.

3.3 Configuring OracleAS Portal During and After Installation

During a middle-tier installation, that includes OracleAS Portal, you can specify if you want to configure, and automatically start OracleAS Portal at the end of the installation. If you select that option, Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) will go configure OracleAS Portal in two phases:

OracleAS Portal middle-tier deployment
OracleAS Portal schema configuration in the OracleAS Metadata Repository

If you choose not to configure OracleAS Portal, and want to do this later, you need to:

Use Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control Console to deploy OracleAS Portal on the middle-tier. Refer to Section 7.2.2, "Using Application Server Control Console to Configure Portal" for more information.
Use the Portal Dependency Settings file and tool, to perform the OracleAS Portal schema configuration in the OracleAS Metadata Repository. You need to perform this step, because OracleAS Metadata Repository configuration is not performed by default, when you use Application Server Control Console, so that existing configuration entries in the OracleAS Metadata Repository are not automatically overwritten. Refer to Appendix A, " Using the Portal Dependency Settings File" for more information.

You can update the OracleAS Metadata Repository with any changes made to the Portal Dependency Settings file iasconfig.xml, related to middle-tier component properties, such as OracleAS Web Cache, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g.

Portal does not support serving two middle-tiers from a single repository, unless it is front-ended by a load balancing router (LBR). Refer to Section 5.3, "Configuring Multiple Middle-Tiers with a Load Balancing Router" for instructions on how to set up OracleAS Portal with an LBR.

If you want to add additional middle-tiers to a farm that is already using Infrastructure Services, you do not want to overwrite the existing configuration entries during the deployment. In this case, you would install the additional middle-tier, without configuring OracleAS Portal, and configure OracleAS Portal, using Application Server Control Console, and the Portal Dependency Settings file and tool.

Note:

By default, iasconfig.xml resides in ORACLE_HOME/portal/conf. If the Portal Dependency Settings file is accessible over a network file system, you can share the file across multiple hosts, avoiding the need to manually replicate it every time the file is modified. If the installation is running on an operating system that supports symbolic links, it is recommended that you use this mechanism to reference a shared file. If, however, the Portal Dependency Settings file is not accessible over the network, you must ensure that the file is kept up-to-date with changes to your site topology. Refer to Section A.1.2, "Updating the Portal Dependency Settings File" for more information.

To use Application Server Control Console to deploy OracleAS Portal on the middle-tier, follow the following steps outlined in Section 7.2.2, "Using Application Server Control Console to Configure Portal".

At this point, your OracleAS Portal middle-tier components are deployed, and configured. The DAD has been created, and the Portal Dependency Settings file iasconfig.xml has been updated.

To update the OracleAS Metadata Repository with any changes made to the Portal Dependency Settings file iasconfig.xml, run the script ptlconfig, located in the directory ORACLE_HOME/portal/conf, as follows:

ptlconfig -all -dad portal

Additional middle-tiers are often added to production sites, to improve scalability. The two-phased process described in the preceding text allows the flexibility of adding additional middle-tiers, without restarting the site.