Summary

OracleAS Portal is a feature-rich development environment that gives developers a multitude of tools and constructs to create and deploy web-based applications quickly and easily. This chapter has introduced the basic OracleAS Portal components that can be built using the wizards provided by Oracle: Forms, Reports, Charts, Dynamic Pages, Lists of Values, and XML Components. You have seen that each of these components (with the exception of LOVs) can be run either in portlet mode (where the intent is to place the component on an Oracle page) or in full-page, or stand-alone, mode. You have also seen that some of the components (like OracleAS Portal Forms and OracleAS Portal Reports) have subtypes (like a simple form based on a table, a master-detail form, or a form based on a procedure) that allow us to create different components based on complex structures within our Oracle database.

In the next chapter, we will explore the advanced OracleAS Portal components, such as calendars, hierarchies, menus , URLs, links, and Data Components. We will also spend some time bringing all of these components together by constructing our first OracleAS Portal page and then noticing how changes to the permissions of users automatically affect how the page is displayed, all without any administrator intervention or additional programming by the developer whatsoever. Another important advanced OracleAS Portal feature, OracleAS Portal Content and Content Management, is also discussed.