4.7 Managing Portlets in zOS

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4.7 Managing Portlets in z/OS

Section 6.3, "Portlet deployment" on page 194 describes how to add and deploy new portlets. After installation of WebSphere Portal on z/OS, a number of portlets are deployed and activated during the portlet deployment post-installation step, as described in "Step twelve: Deploy the base portlets" on page 58.

Portlet WAR files can package multiple portlets, and these are called Portlet Applications. The administrative browser GUI allows you to manage individual portlets, or portlet applications containing multiple portlets. As previously noted in 6.3, "Portlet deployment" on page 194, the deployment process is disruptive to the Portal Server, and if Portal Server is running at the time of deployment it will be stopped and restarted for the deployment of each portlet found within a portlet application. Therefore, we recommend stopping Portal Server manually before making portlet application changes that affect many portlets.

4.7.1 Updating portlets

In a similar way to portlet deployment, updating an existing portlet with a new WAR file is also a two step process, first performed by the administrator from the Portal Administration place, pages Manage Portlet Applications or Manage Portlets, and subsequently from TSO or USS to submit a job that runs script WPAConfig. This also applies to deleting a deployed portlet or portlet application.

Important: 

• On the version of WebSphere Portal for z/OS that we tested, based on PTF2, when performing an update to a portlet that is already installed you should use the same WAR filename as the one that is already deployed.

• The second step, running WPACONF job or WPAConfig script, used for deploying, updating and deleting portlets, will cause the portal server to be stopped and restarted for each portlet, if it was already running. Therefore, we recommend that you stop the portal server before running this job as the second deployment step for portlets.

4.7.2 Installed but not deployed portlets

A number of portlets are provided with WebSphere Portal for z/OS, but not deployed during the post-installation steps. This set of available and deployable portlets is in directory <WPS_ROOT>/PortalServer/app/DeployablePortlets. To deploy them, the WAR files should be transferred to a workstation from where an administrator can use the browser administrative interface to perform Step 1 of the deployment process, followed by deploy Step 2 from the z/OS system.

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