Deployment Service
The portal Deployment Service provides services for accessing the configuration properties required for the portlet deployment. The portlet deployment component is responsible for the integration of portlets into the portal. It handles the correct deployment of portlet applications and their WAR files into WebSphere® Portal and WebSphere Application Server. It uses the WebSphere Application Server management services for the physical deployment and management of WAR files in the WebSphere Application Server. Management of WAR files includes installing, removing, redeploying, starting, and stopping portlet applications.
In the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console, the portal Deployment Service is listed as WP DeploymentService.
Notes:
- WebSphere Portal has the
configuration separated into two types:
- Deployed configuration. This is read-only. The deployed configuration is always read from the file portlet.xml.
- Administrative configuration. This is read/write.
- Portlet applications appear in the Enterprise Application list on the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console. However, you should never manage them from outside the portal. Instead, manage them by using the portal administration portlets or the XML configuration interface of the portal. You recognize web applications which comprise a portlet application by their administrative name, also called the display name. It is shown in the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console. You can identify the name of such a portlet application by a portal specific identifier prefix PA_<name> . This identifier is appended to the name. An example for such a name is PA_WPS_Welcome . The name in turn is derived from the name of the WAR file when the portlet application is installed. You can change this administrative name with an update of the portlet application.
In the following list of properties, the values given
in parentheses are the default values.
- was.admin.host = (localhost)
- The WebSphere Application Server administrative host name. This property is used to adapt to the WebSphere Application Server bootstrap host name, if the default is not applicable.
- use.admin.user = (true)
- Use this key to select between two user authentication mechanisms
for the portal Portlet Deployment Manager to authenticate with
the WebSphere Application
Server administrative
services when portal security is enabled. Specify one of the following
two possible values:
- true
- Use a single preset shared user ID for all portal administrative users who issue WAR deployment requests. This is the default. This is a separate user ID that is common for all users who are allowed to perform install or manage applications tasks. You must register this user ID with WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console User Administrator rights.
- false
- Use the actual user ID by which the administrator issues the WAR deployment request. Every portal user with portlet deployment rights must be added to the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console User list with administrator rights. Alternatively, you can add the complete group of portal administrators to the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console Group administrator rights.
- was.notification.timeout = (900)
- This is the timeout value (in seconds). It specifies how many seconds the deployment tasks waits for an application server event during the management of WAR files. This value may have to be increased on large portal installations.
- portletapp.starting.weight = (100)
- This is the value for the starting weight of the portlet applications (war files). To ensure the correct initialization sequence, this value must be higher than the starting weight of the portal itself.
- portletapp.shared.library.list
- This property defines a list of library references which are added to each deployed WAR file during deployment. You can specify multiple references separated by a comma ( , ). The library references must have already been defined in the application server, and the JAR files must have already been deployed at the location assigned in the reference definition.
- portletapp.reload.enabled = preserve
- Use this key to define the value for the reload property of the
deployed WAR file. This property can have the following values:
- true
- This enables reloading mode for all WAR files. Use this value only for portlet development and portlet debugging purposes, but not for production environments.
- false
- This disables reloading mode for all WAR files. This is the default.
- preserve
- When you specify this value, the setting from the file ibm-web-ext.xmi is applied, if available.
Note: Do not enable reloading in a production environment. Enable reloading only for portlet development and portlet debugging purposes. - discard.config.interval = (60)
- This property defines the minimum time interval for which the
configuration service workspace that is used during WAR file deployment
is kept. After this time expires, the workspace is discarded when
the portal runs the next deployment task. The unit of measure is minutes.
Valid values are listed in the following, together with their meaning:
- -1
- Never discard the workspace.
- 0
- Always discard the workspace immediately after the action that required the workspace has been completed.
- > 0 (numerical value greater than 0)
- Time interval (in minutes) for which a workspace is retained before it is discarded. It is then rebuilt for the next deployment task.
Notes:- Use good judgement when setting this property. The proper use
of this setting must be a compromise between performance and workspace
consumption for the following reasons:
- Discarding the workspace frequently has a negative impact on deployment performance. The larger your portal installation is, the longer it takes to discard and rebuild the workspace to save the configuration changes during WAR file deployment.
- However, retaining a workspace keeps the wp_xxx temporary directories in the WebSphere Application Server wstemp directory. Consequently, the temporary space that they occupy in the file system grows every time a WAR file is deployed and every time the portal is restarted.
- The configuration service workspace is not discarded immediately after expiry of the time interval that you set. The cleanup is done the next time that a deployment operation is called. It checks for expired changes and discards the workspace that they occupy. If further deployment operations occurred after the last time that the timer interval expired and the workspace was released, the changes in the last allocated workspace remain in the file system even on portal shutdown. Nevertheless, the previous cleanup reduces the volume of occupied disk space to only those temporary files that were processed after the last cleanup interval.
The following property protects deployment settings
that users modified by using the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console during WAR update
through web module administration in the portal.
- protect.deployment.attributes = (false)
- Use this property to decide whether you want to have existing
web module attributes of a deployed portlet WAR file overwritten with
future portal updates or not. Portal deployment functions observe
the values that are defined for this service during updates of a WAR
file. However, a user can later modify the attributes of a deployed
WAR by scripting or by using the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console. For example, the
user can modify the sequence by which class loaders are loaded for
an individual WAR file. You can use this property to protect such
modifications and prevent them from being overwritten by the portal
web module deployment function. Valid values are as follows:
- false
- If you do not want to protect WAR file modifications, specify false. This value is the default value.
- true
- To protect modifications to WAR files, specify true.
File location definitions: The following
values define file locations. All these settings have default values
and should only be enabled and modified if the defaults are not appropriate.
- delete.temp.files = (true)
- This property determines whether temporary files that were created during deployment in the directory application.repository.dir.name/temp are deleted or kept. The default is true , which means that the files are deleted. Change the value to false only for debugging purposes so that you can view the content of the temporarily expanded WAR files. When you have completed debugging, change the value back to true and delete the directories manually. If you change the value to false, be aware that the hard drive space required by the temporary directory grows with each WAR file that you add or update.
- shorten.deployment.names = (true)
- Use this key to enforce shorter file names during deployment. Some platforms, such as Windows impose a limit to the length of a file path. This can cause deployment to fail if the resulting path is too long.
- deployment.names.limit = (21)
- This is the threshold value for portlet application file and display names. Longer names will be shortened if required.
The following setting is for debug purposes
only. Enable it only when instructed to do so by support personnel.
- deployment.debug.log.times = (false)
- This setting is for debug purposes only. Enable it only when instructed to do so by support personnel.