Rational Application Developer 8 and WebSphere Portal - RAD is not for Theming :-)

We saw these rather helpful dialogue boxes earlier today: -

with the even more friendly message: -

The selected wizard could not be started.
Plug-in "com.ibm.etools.portal.ui" was unable to instantiate class "com.ibm.etools.portal.internal.wizard.portal.PortalProjectWizard".
Array index out of range: -1

when one clicked on the "Details >>>" button.

Thankfully this Technote: -

Creating a new Portal Project results in "Array index out of range: -1" error

helped us out: -

Creating a new Portal Project results in "Array index out of range: -1" error

This problem only occurs if you attempt to create a new Portal Project when WebSphere Portal Server v7.0 server is installed on your machine.

It is not possible to create or work with Portal projects targeting IBM WebSphere Portal v7.0 or later.

Future versions of Rational Application Developer will show a more appropriate warning message

and links to the Rational Application Developer Information Centre which goes on to say: -

You cannot create and work with the portal projects targeting IBM® WebSphere Portal V7.0, or later. Use the web-based Site Designing Portlet feature to design portal sites on IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1.5, or later. Follow the instructions in IBM WebSphere Portal 7.0 documentation to migrate portal projects deployed on IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1.x to IBM WebSphere Portal V7.0 before working with your portal site using Site Designing Portlet feature.

The Portal Designer can only be used with portal projects targeting all releases of IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1.

Bottom line, if you are looking to design portlets, use a Portlet Project, if you are looking to design themes, use the Site Designing Portlet. You should also look at WebDav to allow you to manage your theme components ( bearing in mind that we have deployed WebSphere Portal 7.0.0.2 which includes the new PageBuilder 2 theme ).