Course Description
In this hands-on lab course, students explore the operational aspects of an IBM WebSphere Portal version 6.0 installation. The student will practice such tasks as installation. migration of data to a relational database, and utillization of a LightWeight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory. This course focuses on the deployment and management of portal resources, such as portlets, pages, themes and skins. Students will manage page heirarchies, configure resource permissions on portal resources, and configure virtual portals.


Class Length
3 days
Who will benefit from this course
The target audience for this course is Independent Software Vendors, Systems Integrators, and IBM technical staff. Architects and developers responsible for implementing solutions using WebSphere Portal version 5 will benefit as well.

Prerequisites
The prerequisites for this course include Intermediate administration skills using WebSphere Application Server version 6.0, acquired through experience and/or completion of IBM WebSphere Application Server V6 Administration(SW246 or WF381) Basic knowledge of portals and WebSphere portal, acquired by completing IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 Fundamentals (WP010)

Course Outline

This course covers the following topics:

Introducing WebSphere Portal

• What are portals and why implement a portal?
• WebSphere Portal as a portal
• Basic infrastructure and components
• Personalization vs. customization

Understanding portal terminology

• Portlets
• Themes and skins
• Menus

Installing WebSphere Portal

• Planning for an installation
• Steps for successful installation
• Verifying installation
• Basic command-line commands
• Troubleshooting installations
• Post-installation migration to a DB2 (relational) database
• Post-installation configuration of WebSphere Portal version 6 to access an LDAP user registry

Understanding the WebSphere Portal architecture

• Overall conceptual architecture
• Administration architecture
• Data configuration split
• Key standards
• Port assignments
• Impact of LDAP and security
• Cluster definitions and scalability basics

Navigating WebSphere Portal

• Nodes: pages, labels and URLs
• Site structure
• Administration pages
• Breadcrumb trail
• Palettes
• Context menus
• Drag and drop

Managing portal page hierarchy

• Create new pages in the page hierarchy
• Configure page properties
• Portlet installation and configuration

Configuring access control

• Authentication vs. authorization
• Authorization (access control)
• Role types, resources and roles
• Role inheritance
• Role blocking
• Traversal permissions
• Shared vs. private resources

Implementing attribute based administration

• Visibility rules
• Resource policies
• Personalization and attribute based administration

Implementing composite applications

• Business components
• Application templates
• Package and deploy
• Security considerations

Re-branding a WebSphere Portal installation

• What does it mean to brand the portal?
• Define themes and skins
• Work with theme policies
• Deploy and manage themes
• Theme performance

Implementing virtual portals

• What are virtual portals?
• Use cases for virtual portals vs. multiple true portals
• Planning
• Scoped resources
• Non-scoped resources
• Creation via scripts
• Administering virtual portals
• Realm support