How to show default values for properties managed by UUP

Question

Is there a way to load default values of properties from an external source while
associating a user with property sets managed by UUP ?
We are trying to write a Custom User Profile using UUP so that some of the User
Profile attributes can be stored using an existing Oracle database schema. But
the values for some of these properties(Profile property set attributes) has to
come from another table which already exist. So the idea is that when a new user
is being associated with the Custom property set using Portal Admin Tool, the
available values for an individual property has to be pulled from from a database
table. Like when selecting a user's home city he can select the name of all cities
already existing in a database table.
I couldn't find a way to do this using the EntityPropertyManager. Anyone has
any idea how to do this?
Thomas.

Answer 1

Hi Thomas,
Yes, the UUP framework is flexible enough for you to easily load default
values of properties from some external source. You can do this if you
deploy your own UserProfileManager that uses a custom PropertySetManager.
When UserProfileManager.getProperty() is called, it looks for the property
for that user and then for the user's implicit and explicit successors
(implicit = persisted for that property set, explicit = given as an argument
in the method call)...if it doesn't find the property (gets null) then it
does this:
PropertySet set = getPropertySetManager().getPropertySet(
getPropertySetType(), propertySet );
if ( set != null )
PropertyDefinition def =
set.getPropertyDefinition( propertyName );
if ( def != null )
result = def.getDefaultValue();
Check out the javadoc for the classes I have mentioned and check out the
ejb-jar.xml depoyment descriptor for the UserProfileManager in usermgmt.jar:
<!-- property set manager -->
<ejb-ref>
<ejb-ref-name>ejb/PropertySetManager</ejb-ref-name>
<ejb-ref-type>Session</ejb-ref-type>
<home>com.bea.p13n.property.PropertySetManagerHome</home>
<remote>com.bea.p13n.property.PropertySetManager</remote>
</ejb-ref>
There are two options for deploying a UUP: 1) use the default
UserProfileManager deployment with your custom EntityPropertyManager
deployment, or 2) use your custom deployment of the UserProfileManager with
your custom EPM deployment.
In almost all cases, option 1) is done. However, in your case, you need to
modify the behavior of the UserProfileManager so you must redeploy a
custom-configured version. This means you will have to register a new
ProfileType for your users with the DD for the UserManager EJB (because your
special users don't use the default UserProfileManager) like this:
<ejb-ref>
<ejb-ref-name>ejb/ProfileType/WLCS_Customer</ejb-ref-name>
<ejb-ref-type>Session</ejb-ref-type>
<home>com.bea.commerce.ebusiness.customer.CustomerProfileManagerHome</home>
<remote>com.bea.commerce.ebusiness.customer.CustomerProfileManager</remote>
</ejb-ref>
If you didn't need to retrieve the default values from your own data source,
here is how you could get the default values using the default deployment of
the UserProfileManager:
* use the EBCC to create a property set (a.k.a "user profile") that matches
your UUP property set name. Create the properties in this pset and the
default values. When the UserProfileManager.getProperty() call fails to
find the property value in your UUP (gets null) it will use the default
PropertySetManager to get metadata about that property from the Portal
schema (which you just set up using the EBCC) and it will return the default
value that you set in the EBCC.
I recommend you study the 2 options for deploying a UUP, especially the
option for deploying a custom version of the UserProfileManager by checking
out the sample UUP on dev2dev.bea.com and by looking at the Portal 4.0 docs.
I don't know if the 7.0 docs have as much detail about this. Also, when you
sit down to implement your custom PropertySetManager you may have to contact
support for some of the details. For instance, how to instantiate a
PropertySet.
Ture Hoefner
BEA Systems, Inc.
www.bea.com
"Thomas KJ" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
Is there a way to load default values of properties from an externalsource while
associating a user with property sets managed by UUP ?
We are trying to write a Custom User Profile using UUP so that some of theUser
Profile attributes can be stored using an existing Oracle database schema.But
the values for some of these properties(Profile property set attributes)has to
come from another table which already exist. So the idea is that when anew user
is being associated with the Custom property set using Portal Admin Tool,the
available values for an individual property has to be pulled from from adatabase
table. Like when selecting a user's home city he can select the name ofall cities
already existing in a database table.
I couldn't find a way to do this using the EntityPropertyManager. Anyonehas
any idea how to do this?
Thomas.