Two Content Repositories in one Webcenter Portal

Introduction

After hearing from some guys, that it is not possible to read content from two different Webcenter Content Servers with one Webcenter Portal application, I got a little suspicious and wanted to proof that this statement is not correct.

The best way to proof this, was by creating a simple WCP application, which contains two ContentPresentors, that read documents from two different WCC Servers.

Abstract Architecture

Implementing the PoC

Prerequesites

• Setup 2 WCC Servers
• Setup 1 JDevelooper with the WCP extension
• The WCP application wll run on the Integrated Weblogic of the JDeveloper

Setup WCC Server

• Setup two default WCC Servers by following the Oracle documentation
• Enable the Folders_g component. This is needed to make the Content Presenter work
• Upload a sample txt file with some content to each of the two WCC servers. The content-id has to be set to TXT_TEST

Create WCP application

• Open JDeveloper and create a standard WCP application by using the wizzard from JDeveloper
• Create two Content Repository connections. One connection for each WCC server. I called the connections wcc and ucm.

• Setup each connection to point to one of the two WCC servers

• Open the home.jspx file, wihch has been created by default, when the WCP project has been created

• Go to the Resource palette and ...

• ...drag and drop the ContentPresneter into the home.jspx page twice

• Go to the pagedef of home.jspx and make adjustments to the parameters of the content presenter. The yellow highlighted part of the picture is pointing to the WCC connection that should be used.

Test

After starting the application you can see in the browser that both files, which come from two different WCC servers are being displayed correctly by using the ContentPresenter.

Make ADF a little bit faster

No. We don't make ADF faster :-)
But we make it seem like it is a little bit faster.

At the moment I work for a customer who is using WCP for his Internet-Presence. At the beginning of the project we discussed about the size of the ADF Javascript library and that this might be a big problem for people with a 56K webaccess.

One workaround for this problem is using the Apache mod_deflate which can compress the Javascript and CSS files before sending them to the client.

You need an Apache and enable the mode_deflate module.
And what I did for testing was this simple configuration. The red line is for mod_deflate.

<Location /portal>

   AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript text/css text/html text/xml

    WebLogicHost localhost

    WebLogicPort 7101

    SetHandler weblogic-handler

</Location>

I did make two screenshot of the Javascript Network Traffic which was captured by Firebug.
The first screenshot shows with no mod_deflate. 1MB of JS

 

The second screenshot shows with mod_deflate. 281KB of JS

The problem is that mod_deflate is not working with all browsers. For Internet applications this is not good. That is why we have to make an advanced mod_deflate configuration which tells the apache not to use mod_deflate if the client is IE6.

For further information on mod_deflate I found a nice blog
http://www.g-loaded.eu/2008/05/10/use-mod_deflate-to-compress-web-content-delivered-by-apache/

How to skin the font of the ADF commandButton

Environment

This case has been tested in the following environment

• JDeveloper 11.1.1.6

UseCase

After testing some time and getting very frustrated I finally found out how to skin the font of the ADF commandButton

Solution

This is what my skinning did look like at first

af|commandButton {
    color: #000000;
    font: 12px bold Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,sans-serif;    
}

The problem was, that when I did hover or click the button the font always changed to 

10pt Arial normal

So I did change my code to this

af|commandButton,  
af|commandButton:hover,  
af|commandButton:active,  
af|commandButton:focus:hover {
    color: #000000;
    font: 12px bold Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,sans-serif;    
}

This also didn't work. I was trying and testing many different things and was looking in Firebug and just couldn't understand why it didn't take my definition.

What I had to do was adding text-only at the end of each class and it was working like a charme. So here is the code I used to adjust the font of my commandButton.

af|commandButton:text-only,  
af|commandButton:hover:text-only,
af|commandButton:active:text-only,
af|commandButton:focus:hover::text-only {
    color: #000000;
    font: 12px bold Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,sans-serif;    
}

Contact me if you still have problems with this

ApacheDS Default PasswordPolicies

I installed ApacheDS 2.0 on my Windows7 system, cause I decided to use ApacheDS as LDAP for my portal.

I always had problems when I was adding a new user to the LDAP and the user had a non plain text password. In my case the password was encrypted with SHA. Here is the error message I received from the LDAP.

Fraction of LDAP Error message
... cannot verify the quality of the non-cleartext passwords ...

According to ApacheDS https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DIRSERVER-1543 the problem is that the attribute pwdCheckQuality is set to 2 by default.The attribute pwdCheckQuality has to be set to 0 to disable the plain text check.

Here are instructions on how the default value of pwdCheckQuality can be set to 0. 

1. Install an ApacheDS client and login as root. I installed the Eclipse plugin.
2. Navigate to DN: ads-pwdId=default,ou=passwordPolicies,ads-interceptorId=authenticationInterceptor,ou=interceptors,ads-directoryServiceId=default,ou=config
3. Change the attribute ads-pwdcheckquality from 2 to 0
4. Restart the ApacheDS server

This worked for me. Now I can add new users with passwords that are not plain text.
Leave a comment if you have questions.

By the way. Solution B would be to sent the passwords in plain Text and let ApacheDS do the encryption and other password policies.


Complete LDAP Error message
Error while creating entry
 - [LDAP: error code 19 - CONSTRAINT_VIOLATION: failed for MessageType : ADD_REQUES
  javax.naming.directory.InvalidAttributeValueException: [LDAP: error code 19 - CONSTRAINT_VIOLATION: failed for MessageType : ADD_REQUEST
Message ID : 17
    Add Request :
Entry
    dn[n]: uid=tobi,ou=users,ou=system
    objectClass: top
    objectClass: person
    objectClass: organizationalPerson
    objectClass: inetOrgPerson
    objectClass: tlsKeyInfo
    objectClass: pwdPolicy
    uid: tobi
    privateKeyFormat: PKCS#8
    sn: administrator
    publicKey: '0x30 0x5C 0x30 0x0D 0x06 0x09 0x2A 0x86 0x48 0x86 0xF7 0x0D 0x01 0x01 0x01 0x05 ...'
    publicKeyFormat: X.509
    userPassword: '0x7B 0x53 0x48 0x41 0x7D 0x35 0x65 0x6E 0x36 0x47 0x36 0x4D 0x65 0x7A 0x52 0x72 ...'
    cn: system administrator
    keyAlgorithm: RSA
    pwdCheckQuality: 0
    privateKey: '0x30 0x82 0x01 0x55 0x02 0x01 0x00 0x30 0x0D 0x06 0x09 0x2A 0x86 0x48 0x86 0xF7 ...'
    userCertificate: '0x30 0x82 0x01 0x73 0x30 0x82 0x01 0x1D 0x02 0x06 0x01 0x3A 0x9D 0x9D 0x85 0x0B ...'
    displayName: Directory Superuser
: cannot verify the quality of the non-cleartext passwords]; remaining name 'uid=tobi,ou=users,ou=system'
    at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.mapErrorCode(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.processReturnCode(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.processReturnCode(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.c_createSubcontext(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.jndi.toolkit.ctx.ComponentDirContext.p_createSubcontext(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.jndi.toolkit.ctx.PartialCompositeDirContext.createSubcontext(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.connection.core.io.jndi.JNDIConnectionWrapper$4.run(JNDIConnectionWrapper.java:658)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.connection.core.io.jndi.JNDIConnectionWrapper.runAndMonitor(JNDIConnectionWrapper.java:1272)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.connection.core.io.jndi.JNDIConnectionWrapper.checkConnectionAndRunAndMonitor(JNDIConnectionWrapper.java:1203)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.connection.core.io.jndi.JNDIConnectionWrapper.createEntry(JNDIConnectionWrapper.java:704)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.ldapbrowser.core.jobs.CreateEntryRunnable.createEntry(CreateEntryRunnable.java:226)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.ldapbrowser.core.jobs.CreateEntryRunnable.run(CreateEntryRunnable.java:117)
    at org.apache.directory.studio.connection.ui.RunnableContextRunner$1.run(RunnableContextRunner.java:113)
    at org.eclipse.jface.operation.ModalContext$ModalContextThread.run(ModalContext.java:121)

  [LDAP: error code 19 - CONSTRAINT_VIOLATION: failed for MessageType : ADD_REQUEST
Message ID : 17
    Add Request :
Entry
    dn[n]: uid=tobi,ou=users,ou=system
    objectClass: top
    objectClass: person
    objectClass: organizationalPerson
    objectClass: inetOrgPerson
    objectClass: tlsKeyInfo
    objectClass: pwdPolicy
    uid: tobi
    privateKeyFormat: PKCS#8
    sn: administrator
    publicKey: '0x30 0x5C 0x30 0x0D 0x06 0x09 0x2A 0x86 0x48 0x86 0xF7 0x0D 0x01 0x01 0x01 0x05 ...'
    publicKeyFormat: X.509
    userPassword: '0x7B 0x53 0x48 0x41 0x7D 0x35 0x65 0x6E 0x36 0x47 0x36 0x4D 0x65 0x7A 0x52 0x72 ...'
    cn: system administrator
    keyAlgorithm: RSA
    pwdCheckQuality: 0
    privateKey: '0x30 0x82 0x01 0x55 0x02 0x01 0x00 0x30 0x0D 0x06 0x09 0x2A 0x86 0x48 0x86 0xF7 ...'
    userCertificate: '0x30 0x82 0x01 0x73 0x30 0x82 0x01 0x1D 0x02 0x06 0x01 0x3A 0x9D 0x9D 0x85 0x0B ...'
    displayName: Directory Superuser
: cannot verify the quality of the non-cleartext passwords]

WCC - Howto update SecurityGroup of Contribution Folder

Environment

This case has been tested in the following environment

• WebcenterContent 11.1.1.4
• Folders_g component

UseCase

UseCase is defined in the title. It is not allowed to update the metadata of the "Contribution Folder" by default. But we want to make changes anyways.

Solution

The following steps have to be done to be able to make updates

• open <mw_home>/Oracle_ECM1/ucm/idc/components/Folders_g/Folders_environment.cfg
• Set the parameter CollectionReadOnlyMarkedFolders to false
• Restart the UCM Server
• The SecurityGroup and other metadata of the "Contribution Folder" can be updated now
• Set the parameter CollectionReadOnlyMarkedFolders to true
• Restart UCM Server

 

Attention Oracle Bug:

After updating the "Contribution Folder" it is no longer possible to access the "Contribution Folder" with your Desktop Integration Suite.
This problem can be solved by ...

• Use SQLDeveloper to access the Collections table of the UCM. In my case DEV_OCS has to be accessed
• Updating the "Contribution Folder" did set the dParentCollectionID of "Contribution Folder" from -1 to null. Revert this automatic change and set the dParentCollectionID to -1 again. 
• Now accessing the "Contribution Folder" with Desktop Integration Suite should be possible again.

Contact me if you still have problems with this