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Best Practices Guide

# Configuration and Administration

# Configuring WebLogic Portal 8.1

This section contains configuration suggestions for development as well as production, and includes information on the following topics:

- Split Configuration
- Deploying an EAR Versus an Exploded Application
- How to Use Active Directory
- Single Signon Between Two Portal Web Applications

## Split Configuration

Note on Split Configuration - WebLogic Portal does not support a split configuration, where servlet and EJB containers run on separate server instances.

## Deploying an EAR Versus an Exploded Application

Once the development of a Portal Web application has been completed, what remains is to deploy it to the production environment. A number of choices need to be made at this point. For example, the application can be deployed as an EAR if nothing inside it needs to be changed. For details on the advantage to this approach, along with instructions, consult the "Packaging Enterprise Applications" section of the WebLogic Platform documentation. Applications can also be deployed without being archived into an EAR file. This enables some kinds of files within the application to be changed without having to un-deploy and re-deploy the entire application. For instance, in an application that uses e-mail campaigns, certain JSPs may need to be altered during production.

## How to Use Active Directory

If you have used a third party single signon solution and they want to integrate to WebLogic Portal 8.1, the single signon solution is to authenticate users in Active directory but store all policy and group information in the RDBMS.

If the single signon solution is Netegrity Siteminder, for instance, Siteminder offers both the Web Server Agent (authentication by Siteminder, Authorization by WebLogic Portal) and App Server Agent integrations (both authentication and authorization by Siteminder). Currently, only the Web Server Agent integration works with WebLogic Portal. Siteminder will provide the Application Server Agent integration with WLP 8.1.

## Single Signon Between Two Portal Web Applications

To implement single signon within two portal Web applications, set the cookie to be the same in the WebLogic Server Console. That is, set the cookie name to be the same, with different cookie paths, one for each application.