Dissatisfied with usability of the Portal Studio site

Hello,
We are ramping up production and I have been tasked with developing a proof of concept for Portal. Of course, I've spent countless hours setting up 9iAS, and even trying to understand this whole 'Portal' portal product (like many others). I have devloped in J2EE, VB, VC++, and plenty of other scripting (ASP, Perl) languages.
My experience on that site has been painful at best and it doesn't really seem to be very useful for the most important documentation from a developers standpoint.
It's almost as if it's information overload and just outright confusing. (Which is a concern our company has of implementing portal to our mere mortal users :-] )
All I want to do is find good reference material for setting up Portal, using Java to develop portlets on our development 9iAS instance (NOT using Oracle's hosted 'portal studio'!!), and configuring and setting up the URL based portlets.
This has turned out to be no easy task.
FOr instance, I want to figure out how to create a URL based portlet, AND UNDERSTAND WHAT I"M DOING! This seems to be the part that is skipped. If it's sooooo easy than why is it so difficult to find good reference to what i'm doing?
So I dig around the main portal page. I see a getting started link.. *click*.
Well, I don't see anything specific to URL Providers... maybe the "How can I create portlets using my existing web applications?" is what I want. *click*
Oh, look.. it's like 3rd grade.. a slide show!>.. Cool. :-| okay.. ERRRGHHHT!... hit the brakes!.
"The PDK provides a samle XML configuration file.." ??? where is my link to more information about this magic "configuration file"???.... ahh. So I stop the silly slideshow and I want to know about this "configuration file".. *close window*
Now I'm back at the portal studio heap.
hmm.. "Documentation" for POrtal *click*
Hmm.. after searching through this mind boggling page, there is a "Portal configuration guide" link.. sounds reasonable. *click*
so I look for "URL Provider".. or just "URL" on that page. Nothin found. bah!.. well, now I'm stumped. There is this mystery 'config' file that i've failed to quickly find information about. Strike 1.
So I use the other part of my brain (the developer side)...
There is this "HTTP Adapter" thing. Looks like part of the acclaimed "URL provider" mess. SO i read on...
blah blah blah... nothin of significant use stands out.
ah... somethin... "4.3 Registering A Provider Using The PL/SQL HTTP Adapter".. again. useless. *click * click * back *
So now I retreat back to the silly portal studio page.
Back to the task at hand... finding out the innerds of the configuration files involved in writing a "URL provider".
Looking at the available documents.. OHH LOOK! the actual documentation library is buried at the bottom of the page!.. hmm. I just read the "config guide".. "web toolkit"...?? I wonder.. *click* (grinding as Acrobat loads again)
AHhhh.. it's a "PL/SQL" web toolkit. Not imporessed. How many web developers actually know PL/SQL .. or would WANT to program logic in that query language??? or even any Java or C developers?...grr..
*click* back *
Where is it..??>. this is about the point where I start to forget what I'm looking for.
Well, I've come to the conclusion that the "Oracle9iAS Portal Documentation Library" is a small library, as it doesn't appear to have any good reference for the details of portal use and configuration.. or at least involving the URL services.
*back*back*.. Oh, look what I found.
Near the bottom of the page ("getting started"), there is a link under ""Navigation"" that reads "URL-based: Learn how the PDK helps you build portlets in any web language."
hmm. looks promising. Maybe a little more respectable than that 3rd grade slide show.
*click*
"BUilding URL based portlets".. Ahh presto!
Nice. opened a new browser window. (dumb)
Okay.. I need the PDK.
*click**download**wait*
I extract it to a warm home.
hmm.."Installing URL based Portlets".. sounds intriguing
well, it's now lunch time and I thing I found some good meat.
If you've rached this point you can probably now understand (after reading this long post) tha pain I experience.
GOtta eat some lunch.
-sean@Tekelec

Sean,
I am sorry to hear that you had such problems navigating through Portal Studio to find content on URL Services. Right now Portal Studio is geared by technology, so you click on URL-Based for URL Services, Java for building Java Portlets. Hopefully all the doc will be there to help you. If not, I would be happy to point you in the right direction.
If you are looking to display web content as portlets, you should take a look at Web Clipping, it is a wizard form of URL Services where you simply use the wizard UI.
Go to Portal Studio and click on OmniPortlet and WebClipping or go here:
http://portalstudio.oracle.com/servlet/page?_pageid=350&_dad=ops&_schema=OPSTUDIO&12678_PDKHOME902_39847486.p_subid=350276&12678_PDKHOME902_39847486.p_sub_siteid=73&12678_PDKHOME902_39847486.p_edit=0
This page has demos and papers on using Web Clipping. To install Web Clipping, download the PDK and follow the instructures under the pdk/pdk/portalTools directory.
We are revamping the Portal Studio site to hopefully make navigation much easier for all users (developer and non developer).
Please let me know if you help finding other information. The feedback does help us improve the site.
Thanks,
Sue Vickers

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Usability of the Portal Studio Catalog & Knowledge Exchange...

Just wanted to say:
Usability of the Portal Studio Catalog in a word:
SUX.
Browsing the catalog is incredibly tedious on a corporate LAN; can't imagine how impossible it would be on any slower speed connection: Click. Wait. Click. Wait. Click. Wait.
The Knowledge Exchange, in a word:
ISN'T.
And, while I'm getting this off my chest, I am SICK AND TIRED of having to enter my password 15 times a session. If my network/machine is cookie-friendly enough for your system to remember my username, why can't you manage to retain my password when I go from one page to another??
Sheesh.
And, the reason I'm submitting this complaint here, and not in the elusive Feedback section, is because it's too dam' hard to get to!!!
Has Oracle EVER once run a Usability Study on its website(s)???
Sheri

Hiya, Mohana, and thanks for the response!
Have you checked the browser setting (if using IE, check Internet Options, Security tab, and if you have Custom setting, verify settings like the Userdata Persistence and User Authentication.) I've added portalstudio.oracle.com and otn.oracle.com to my list of trusted (!!) internet sites. However, I'm on a US Army intranet, so there's a limit as to what I can change WRT security. I've already established with one of your managers that there are some issues with our firewalls and your site. For example, I can't view the monthly developer's newsletters from work, inside the firewall... but when I go home and login to Oracle via my cable modem, I can see the newsletters just fine.
Your problem with performance (click and wait) also seems to be stemming from a configuration issue - I'm specifically talking about the catalog tree structure. You click on the little (+) signs, wait wait wait, and get a teensy bit of info. Then click again to see a teensy bit more info. Soon the whole screem is full. So, you have to click on the (-) signs to compress the open parts of the tree. The page is slow to load, regardless of the time of day. I admit, pages on the internet can sometimes load slowly at lunchtime hereabouts, but for most of the day that's not at all a problem. Nor do I have this problem with other pages on the oracle.com site. Just the catalog. There's simply got to be a more efficient, faster way to display this tree and its content.
Regarding the Knowledge Exchange, I'd be happy to know what exactly are the issues you're facing in using the KE. Did you try downloading any contributions or uploading your own? First of all, it's darn hard to find anything to download on the KE. Yes, the top five items of the day are simple. But, there's no organized catalog of offerings that I can find. Deep digging is required.
Uploading something?? Hah. I'm no Java programmer. I can readily massage existing code to make it do what I want, and I have PL/SQL Developer, which is a very neat and easy-to-use program. However, I wasn't able to figure out how to get the PDK working in 90 minutes of trying--and gave up in frustration; I have slews of content to put up!! Too, our Lab development staff wasn't able to get PDK working, either, and they ARE programmers and DBMs.
And, while I've got your much-appreciated attention, we're still on Rel 1, and it is very difficult and time-consuming to navigate thru. We have Rel 2 sitting in the Lab, ready to install, however, the report from the Lab team yesterday is the benefits of Rel 2 are not worth the effort of installation. "It's too buggy, not to mention there's a lot of vaporware: promise of functionality that won't really be available until the next release in March 2003."
I tell you, I wanted to cry when I heard that. Can you give me any ammo to contradict that opinion??
And, if there's a Oracle front-end developer's List out there anywhere like the HTML Webmonster List, I would dearly love to know where to join!!
One final point: the path links in the gray bars in the Oracle Discussion Forums are not coded properly. Look at the top of my first message where it says:
Products > Portal > Performance and Scalability
Click on any of those words; doesn't matter. You SHOULD go back up the path a level or two. But instead, you stay on the same page. Might as well click Refresh/Reload. The path links in the red bar at the top of the page work fine:
Oracle Technology Network > Collaboration > My Forums
They take you up the path. Just not in the gray bar.
Sheri

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Those sites take a long time to load for me (almost a minute)
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http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-httpcomp/
http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/
http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/HttpCompressionQnD.asp?df=100&forumid=322472&exp=0&select=1722189#xx1722189xx
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http://perl.apache.org/docs/tutorials/client/compression/compression.html
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http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-optimize-your-site-with-http-caching/
http://betterexplained.com/articles/speed-up-your-javascript-load-time/
http://betterexplained.com/articles/speed-up-your-javascript-load-time/
http://www.rubyrobot.org/article/5-tips-for-faster-loading-web-sites
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http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php
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http://www.port80software.com/surveys/top1000compression/
http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
http://www.15seconds.com/issue/020314.htm
http://www.devwebpro.com/devwebpro-39-20041117DevelopingYourSiteforPerformanceCompressionandOtherServerSideEnhancements.html
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Edited by tkoenings at 06/18/2007 6:26 AM

Hi Scott,
Does Weblogic platform 8.1 supports netscape? We have developed a portal which
works perfectly on IE but it dies in netscape. Is netUI tags not supported in
Netscape?
Pls reply
manju
Scott Dunbar <[email protected]> wrote:
From a pure HTML perspective Portal does it's rendering with nested
tables.
Netscape 4.x and below have terrible performance with nested tables.
The
problem is not the Portal server but rather Netscape on the client machine.
If IE and/or a recent version of Netscape/Mozilla is not possible then
there are
really only two options:
1) Faster client hardware - not likely to be an acceptable solution.
2) Minimize the number of portlets and the complexity within the portlets.
Neither of these solutions are a great answer, but the 4.7 series of
Netscape is
getting pretty old. Having said that, we've got customers who want to
continue
to use IE 4 :)
Again, though, this problem is, I'm afraid out of our hands. It is the
client
rendering time that is the issue.
cg wrote:
Does anyone know of any known reasons why the 7.0 (did it also with4.0) portal
pages can take up to almost 30 seconds to load in Netscape 4.7? I knowit is a
very generic question but our customer still uses 4.7 and will notuse the portal
b/c it takes so long to load some of the webapps. What the pages willdo when
loading is that the headers will come up and when it gets to the bodyof the page
it seems to stall and then comes up all of a sudden. For some of thepages it
takes 6 seconds and for others it takes about 24-27 seconds.
We have suggested using IE only but that is not an option with allof the customers
and getting a newer version of Netscape is also out of the question.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.--
scott dunbar
bea systems, inc.
boulder, co, usa

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i want to access portal from my web site. i have created username and password fields in my web page. when submited , my portal page should open. so how to pass username and password with the portal url.

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[Creating Deployment Specific Pages| http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14099_19/idmanage.1012/b14078/custom.htm#i1015535]
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hope that helps!
AMN

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Publishing a site through UAG without using the Portal login

Good Day -
I'd like to ask if there is a way to publish access to an internal site through UAG without users having to use the Portal login - say by providing a link -

Hello,
The portal app is mandatory even if you not use it, indeed if you delete this app UAG stop to work as expected.
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Regards,
Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/liontux | My Blog (French/English) :
http://security.sakuranohana.fr/

Dissatisfied with usability of the Portal Studio site

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