Oracle WebCenter
Encyclopedia
Owned by Oracle
, Oracle WebCenter is a product built on top of the JSF
based Oracle Application Development Framework
. It contains a set of components for building rich web applications, portal
s, and team collaboration/social sites. Oracle WebCenter is targeted at both the development community and business users, delivering a development environment that includes WebCenter Framework and WebCenter Services along with an out-of-the-box application for team collaboration and enterprise social networking
. According to Oracle, this is the strategic portal product, eventually replacing Oracle Portal as well as the portal products acquired from BEA.
The base WebCenter Framework allows you to embed portlet
s, ADF Taskflows, content, and customizable components in your Oracle ADF application. All Framework pieces are integrated into the Oracle JDeveloper
IDE, providing access to these resources as you build your applications.
WebCenter Services are a set of independently deployable collaboration services. It incorporates Web 2.0
components such as content, collaboration, and communication services - the full list is provided below. WebCenter Services includes Oracle ADF user interface components (called Taskflows) that can be embedded directly into ADF applications. In addition, APIs can be utilized to create custom UIs and to integrate some of these services into non-ADF applications.
Finally, WebCenter Spaces is a closed source application built on WebCenter Framework and Services that offers a prebuilt project collaboration solution. It can be compared with solutions like Microsoft Sharepoint and Atlassian Confluence. There are limited mechanisms to extend this application. It is featured in an Accenture Enterprise 2.0 video.
Note that there is a product called WebCenter Interaction which is not built on the core WebCenter stack - it is the former Plumtree portal product. Also, all Oracle portal products at Oracle are included in the WebCenter Suite, which is an umbrella of products. Products can be included in the suite regardless of whether they are built on the ADF based WebCenter Framework.
Shared Services - Provides features for both social networking and personal productivity.
Personal Productivity Services - Focuses on the requirements of an individual, rather than a group.
WebCenter Framework and Services lacks support for these notable technologies :
space, and WebCenter Services/Spaces plays in the Collaboration Workspace space. There are many competitors in each. Notable solutions include:
Enterprise Portal
Collaboration
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, Oracle WebCenter is a product built on top of the JSF
JavaServer Faces
JavaServer Faces is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development integration of web-based user interfaces....
based Oracle Application Development Framework
Oracle Application Development Framework
In computing, Oracle Application Development Framework, usually called Oracle ADF, provides a commercial Java framework for building enterprise applications. It provides visual and declarative approaches to Java EE development...
. It contains a set of components for building rich web applications, portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
s, and team collaboration/social sites. Oracle WebCenter is targeted at both the development community and business users, delivering a development environment that includes WebCenter Framework and WebCenter Services along with an out-of-the-box application for team collaboration and enterprise social networking
Enterprise social networking
Enterprise social networking focuses on the use of online social networks or social relations among people who share business interests and/or activities. Enterprise social networking is often a facility of enterprise social software , which is essentially social software used in "enterprise" ...
. According to Oracle, this is the strategic portal product, eventually replacing Oracle Portal as well as the portal products acquired from BEA.
Versions
- WebCenter 11g Release 1 - released July 2, 2009
- WebCenter 10g (10.1.3.2.0) - released January 2007
Cost
The product costs $70,000 per CPU for the WebCenter Services, and $125,000 per CPU for WebCenter Suite . In a production install, expect to deploy at least 4 CPUs as a base system and likely additional CPUs in dev & test. WebCenter includes embedded US licenses of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, Oracle Universal Content Management, and Oracle BPEL Process Manager. In addition, WebCenter needs a database to store information: a licenses for any supported database like Oracle database, MS SQL Server or IBM DB2 will work.WebCenter product stack
There are three major products in the WebCenter product stack.The base WebCenter Framework allows you to embed portlet
Portlet
Portlets are pluggable user interface software components that are managed and displayed in a web portal. Portlets produce fragments of markup code that are aggregated into a portal. Typically, following the desktop metaphor, a portal page is displayed as a collection of non-overlapping portlet...
s, ADF Taskflows, content, and customizable components in your Oracle ADF application. All Framework pieces are integrated into the Oracle JDeveloper
JDeveloper
JDeveloper is a freeware IDE supplied by Oracle Corporation. It offers features for development in Java, XML, SQL and PL/SQL, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL and PHP...
IDE, providing access to these resources as you build your applications.
WebCenter Services are a set of independently deployable collaboration services. It incorporates Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
components such as content, collaboration, and communication services - the full list is provided below. WebCenter Services includes Oracle ADF user interface components (called Taskflows) that can be embedded directly into ADF applications. In addition, APIs can be utilized to create custom UIs and to integrate some of these services into non-ADF applications.
Finally, WebCenter Spaces is a closed source application built on WebCenter Framework and Services that offers a prebuilt project collaboration solution. It can be compared with solutions like Microsoft Sharepoint and Atlassian Confluence. There are limited mechanisms to extend this application. It is featured in an Accenture Enterprise 2.0 video.
Note that there is a product called WebCenter Interaction which is not built on the core WebCenter stack - it is the former Plumtree portal product. Also, all Oracle portal products at Oracle are included in the WebCenter Suite, which is an umbrella of products. Products can be included in the suite regardless of whether they are built on the ADF based WebCenter Framework.
WebCenter services capabilities
Social Networking Services - Enables users to maximize productivity through collaboration.- People Connection – Enables users to assemble their business networks like linked-in
- Discussions - Provides the ability to create and participate in threaded discussion. This is an embedded version of Forums provided by Jive SoftwareJive SoftwareJive Software is a software company in the social business software industry based in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 2001, Jive maintains additional offices in Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, Frankfurt, Germany, Tel Aviv, Israel, and London, UK.-Products:...
. - Announcements - Enables users to post, personalize, and manage announcements.
- Instant Messaging and Presence (IMP) - Provides the ability to observe the online presence status of other authenticated users (whether online, offline, busy, or idle) and to contact them.
- Blog - Enables blogging functionality within the context of an application. This feature comes from an embedded version of open source package jzWiki.
- Wiki - Self-service, community, oriented-content publishing and sharing. This is an embedded version of open source package jzWiki.
Shared Services - Provides features for both social networking and personal productivity.
- Documents - Provides content management and storage capabilities, including content upload, file and folder creation and management, file check out, versioning, and so on. This functionality requires licensing of a JCR (JSR-170) compliant document repository product.
- Links - Provides the ability to view, access, and associate related information; for example, you can link to a solution document from a discussion thread.
- Lists - Enables users to create, publish, and manage lists. (Available only in WebCenter Spaces)
- Page - Provides the ability to create and manage pages at run time.
- Tags - Provides the ability to assign one or more personally relevant keywords to a given page or document. This feature is similar to the del.cio.us website.
- Events -Provides group calendars, which users can use to schedule meetings, appointments, and any other type of team get-together. This feature requires deployment of a separate calendering server, which may be Oracle Beehive or Microsoft Exchange. (Available only in WebCenter Spaces)
Personal Productivity Services - Focuses on the requirements of an individual, rather than a group.
- Mail - Provides integration with IMAP and SMTP mail servers to enable users to perform simple mail functions such as viewing, reading, creating, and deleting messages, creating messages with attachments, and replying to or forwarding existing messages.
- Notes - Provides the ability to "jot down" and retain quick bits of personally relevant information. (Available only in WebCenter Spaces)
- Recent Activities - Provides a summary view of recent changes to documents, discussions, and announcements.
- RSS - Provides the ability to publish content from WebCenter Web 2.0 Services as news feeds in RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 formats. In addition, the RSS service enables you to publish news feeds from external sources on your application pages.
- Search - Provides the ability to search tags, services, an application, or an entire site. This makes use of a license limited version of Oracle's search product.
- Worklist - Provides a personal, at-a-glance view of business processes that require attention. These can include a request for document review and other types of business process that come directly from enterprise applications.
Official and de facto standards support
WebCenter Framework supports the following standards:- J2EE 1.4Java Platform, Enterprise EditionJava Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java platform differs from the Java Standard Edition Platform in that it adds libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier...
and above (Java EEJava Platform, Enterprise EditionJava Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java platform differs from the Java Standard Edition Platform in that it adds libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier...
) - JSR 168 and JSR 286
- WSRP 1.0 and 2.0Web Services for Remote PortletsWeb Services for Remote Portlets is an OASIS-approved network protocol standard designed for communications with remote portlets.-Overview:...
- JCR 1.0Content repository API for JavaContent Repository API for Java is a specification for a Java platform application programming interface to access content repositories in a uniform manner. The content repositories are used in content management systems to keep the content data and also the metadata used in content management...
- JSFJavaServer FacesJavaServer Faces is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development integration of web-based user interfaces....
- JSR 116
Release of WebCenter 11g R1 Patch Set 3 (PS3)
In January 2011 Oracle released WebCenter 11g Release 1 Patch Set 3. As the converged portal platform, this is a major new release with many features integrated from previously-acquired portal products, including a greatly improved and flexible portal framework, improved GUI, personalization server, brand new navigation model, support for hierarchical pages and spaces, JSR 286, improved performance, and more.WebCenter Framework and Services lacks support for these notable technologies :
- Internet Explorer 6.0Internet ExplorerWindows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
- Eclipse (software)Eclipse (software)Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...
IDE but Oracle JDeveloper is provided as part of the suite of tools.
Customers
The Oracle customer reference site generally uses the WebCenter Suite label for all portal customers.Notable competitors
WebCenter Framework plays in the Enterprise portalEnterprise portal
An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal or corporate portal, is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. It provides a secure unified access point, often in the form of a web-based user interface, and is designed...
space, and WebCenter Services/Spaces plays in the Collaboration Workspace space. There are many competitors in each. Notable solutions include:
Enterprise Portal
- IBM WebSphere PortalWebSphere PortalIBM WebSphere Portal is a set of software tools that enables companies to build and manage web portals.According to a Gartner Research comparison of software for horizontal portals, WebSphere Portal software is a leader in that market, having delivered "significantproduct innovation," and being...
- JBossJBossJBoss Application Server is an open-source Java EE-based application server. An important distinction for this class of software is that it not only implements a server that runs on Java, but it actually implements the Java EE part of Java...
Enterprise Portal - Liferay Portal
- Microsoft SharePointMicrosoft SharePointMicrosoft SharePoint is a web application platform developed by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint is typically associated with web content management and document management systems, but it is actually a much broader platform of web technologies, capable of being configured into a wide...
Collaboration
- Microsoft SharePointMicrosoft SharePointMicrosoft SharePoint is a web application platform developed by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint is typically associated with web content management and document management systems, but it is actually a much broader platform of web technologies, capable of being configured into a wide...
External links
- WebCenter Official Home
- Oracle WebCenter 11g Handbook
- Peter Moskovits' WebCenter Blog
- Oracle Application Server
- Oracle WebCenter page on the Oracle Wiki
- Oracle WebCenter 11g Handbook: Build Rich, Customizable Enterprise 2.0 Applications - Amazon | McGraw Hill