Fun with WebSphere Portlet Factory

Hit a couple of challenges with WPF today; one I was able to resolve, the other is still taxing me :-\

In the first instance, models that ran perfectly via the Run button in Designer failed with "This portlet is unavailable" when deployed to the portal page. After some digging around, it transpired that the project had been set up incorrectly in terms of deployment; in this case, the portal was running on port 10044 rather than the normal 10038 - see here.

This meant that Designer wasn't setting up the correct file paths for the Portlet WAR, as seen in this screenshot.

Note that the EAR file that's deployed to the portal server can have any old name - this system-generated name is unique, so it's nice to know where to find it ( otherwise you'll spend time digging around on the server for it ).

Once I fixed this, all worked according to plan.

The other problem relates to the use of the Excel Import - Enhanced builder when accessing an Excel spreadsheet when the target remote deployment server is based on Linux - I get a nice NPE: -

java.lang.NullPointerException at com.bowstreet.builders.webapp.methods.ExcelImportHelper.getContentSelection(ExcelImportHelper.java:106)

If I use the non-enhanced builder, all is well.

Still, better to have days with challenges than challenges without days ( does that deep, or just dumb ? ).