WebSphere Portal on z/OS

Chapter 6. Portlet development and deployment 201

Jobs that have errors are moved to the failed directory and not to the done

directory. Therefore, after the problem is fixed, move the job from the failed

directory to the jobs or work directory. Then re-run the WAPCONF job or

WPAConfig script.

If everything was successful, go to a Web browser and bring up the default portal

page, via the URL http://<HOST_NAME>:8082/wps/portal. If need be, login and

navigate to the page where the new portlets are placed. If the portlets were

placed on a place and page after Step 1 of the deployment process then they

should now be visible without errors.

6.4 Portlet deployment examples

In this section we show two examples of deploying portlets on z/OS as follows:

1. Using WPACONF job via TSO to deploy a portlet from the Portlet Catalog.

Section 6.4.3, “Installing portlets obtained from the Portlet Catalog” on

page 215 provides more information about portlets from the Portlet Catalog.

2. Using the WPAConfig script via USS to deploy an out of the box portlet

installed during portal server installation but not deployed.

6.4.1 Example of installing a portlet using WPACONF job

As our first example of deploying a portlet, we used the Health Care

click-to-action (C2A) sample portlet available for download from the Portlet

Catalog (NAVCODE 1WP10003L).

Install the portlet via WebSphere Portal administration GUI

There are a number of different paths that an administrator can take to deploy

portlets and make them available for users on a page. In fact, the only steps an

administrator has to do is deploy the portlets and assign user rights so that users

can add them to a page for themselves. In this example, we performed the

following steps as an administrator to install the portlet:

1. Download the sample from the Portlet Catalog Web site to a Windows system

and unzip the file. Follow the instructions in the supplied documentation in the

form of file readme.html.

202 WebSphere Portal on z/OS

2. Stop the Portal Server from a TSO session and then restart it.

3. Ensure that WebSphere Portal server on z/OS is running, and from a Web

browser go to the following URL: http://<HOST_NAME>/wps/portal.

4. Login as the portal administrator with the default userid and password of

wpsadmin as shown in Figure 6-17 on page 208.

5. Go to the Portal Administration place and select Install Portlets.

6. Browse the directory on the distributed system that corresponds to

<WPS_PATH>/PortalServer/app/DeployablePortlets directory and select

healthcarec2a.war. Click Next.

7. On the Install Portlet Application screen, the portlet(s) contained in the WAR

and to be deployed are shown as in Figure 6-13 on page 203.

8. Click Install to install all the C2A Health Care sample portlets and ensure you

receive the message Portlets successfully installed.

Tip: Because of the installation differences between distributed platforms and

z/OS we used the following directories on z/OS instead of the ones referred to

in the portlet installation instructions:

򐂰 Step 3: Used directory <WPS_PATH>/PortalServer/libbapp instead of

<was_root>\lib\app.

򐂰 Step 4: Used directory <WPS_PATH>/PortalServer/libbapp/nls instead of

<was_root>\lib\app\nls.

򐂰 Step 5: Created directory c2a in directory

<WS_CONFIG_PATH>/apps/WSPORT/WPS Enterprise

Application\wps.war instead of <wp_root>\app\wps.ear\wps.war.

򐂰 Step 6: Used directory <WPS_PATH>/libapp/WEB-INF/tld instead of

<was_root>\lib\app|WEB-INF\tld.

Tip: We recommend that changes are made, if required, to properties and

xml files before deploying portlets on z/OS. This is because some of these

files are in ASCII format, and some are stored inside the runtime of the

expanded WAR file on the application server, making it difficult to change

them after deployment.

Note: The following steps will fail for the C2A portlets, if the Portal server is

not stopped and restarted after following the portlet installation Steps 3-8 in

the Readme.

Chapter 6. Portlet development and deployment 203

Figure 6-13 Installing C2A portlets from the Portal Administration place

Run the WPACONF job

Logon to TSO and using the TSO ISH environment you can optionally verify that

the portlet deployment job(s) have been added to directory

<WPS_PATH>/temp/jobs as shown in Figure 6-14 on page 204.