WebSEAL and WebSphere Portal - An Integration Pattern

Saw this on Stephen Swann's blog

Thanks to Niall, I've been encouraged to provide my thoughts on how Single Sign On from WebSEAL to WebSphere Portal can be achieved.

In reality, the integration pattern is one of the simpler patterns to adopt. I say simple, but as Niall alluded to when asking me to provide my thoughts on the issue he quite rightly stated that there are at least two approaches to the problem - the LTPA approach and the TAI approach.

Definitely worth a read, as he's a pretty sharp cookie ( if that's even possible ).

IBM Web Experience Factory - My First Time Out

I was updating a WebSphere Portal Express v7 VMware image  for a colleague, using an existing VM built using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5.

Having updated Portal to use the latest 7.0.0.1 CF009 codebase, I also wanted to include the most recent version of WebSphere Portlet Factory Designer, now known as IBM Web Experience Factory.

Having sought and downloaded the product: -

IBM Web Experience Factory V7.0.1 Multiplatform Multilingual (CI1XDML)

as CI1XDML.zip and the corresponding fix pack ( WEF_7012_FIXPACK.zip ), I also needed a copy of Eclipse into which to install WEF.

For some strange reason, IBM includes Eclipse with WEF on Windows, but not on Unix :-(

Looking at the System Requirements document, I noticed that Eclipse 3.6.1 is required.

This led me to the Eclipse.org website, from where I downloaded Eclipse JEE Helios.

This gave me a file - eclipse-jee-helios-linux-gtk.tar.gz - which I installed by simply expanding it ( via tar xvzf ) into its own directory - /opt/IBM/WebSphere/PortletFactory/eclipse.

Having done this, I was able to install and fix pack WEF, and create portlets to my heart's content.



Lotus Traveler workshop. Dublin 6th December

This from Paul Mooney 

We have never ran the Traveler workshop in Dublin, so with the end of the year rapidly closing in, it's about time to rectify that.

The Lotus Traveler deep dive workshop will be held in the Conrad Hotel in Dublin on the 6th December.  Details here.  Register here.

New backup & restore tool for IBM Connections Communities

Saw this posted by Suzanne Livingston on synch.rono.us earlier, and thought "Wow, that's shiny, oh so shiny"

There is a new asset in the Greenhouse Catalog for IBM Connections users. 

IBM Connections community backup and restore is an easy way to back up and restore Connections communities. 

Features:

• Back up a Connections community to a zip file. Backs up Members, Forums, Feeds, Bookmarks, Activities, Blog, Wiki, and Files in a community, interactively or via script.

• Restore a Connections community from the backup zip file. Restores Members, Forums, Feeds, Bookmarks, Activities, and Blog to a community.

• NOTE: Files and Wiki pages cannot be automatically restored.

Now we need some of that :-)

Nice one, folks

IBM Connections – Incorrect Global Moderation Alerts

This from Jon Halman's blog, one which I regularly follow for the gems, nay pearls, of wisdom

I've been working with a customer recently on Moderation within IBM Connections 3.0.1 and we discovered an issue where alerts are being sent to Global Moderators when they shouldn't.

In this scenario pre-moderation (content approval) is disabled but post-moderation (content flagging) is enabled and Blog owners (both Community and standalone) are allowed to moderate comments on their blogs.

If a Blog owner enables moderation on comments then they will receive a notification asking them to approve (or not) comments when they are submitted. The problem is that the Global Moderators also receive this notification which they shouldn't (as pre-moderation is disabled).

Want to know more ?

Then check out the blog post ...

Integrating Lotus Connections V3 with WebSphere Portal Search V7

Saw this in two places this morning ….

(i) My colleague, Cali, bookmarked it on our internal IBM Connections 3.0.1 deployment, which meant that the IBM Lotus Connections alerts plugin for Lotus Notes  told me about it almost immediately ….

(ii) My other colleague, Stu, Tweeted about it, within a few seconds

Ah, serendipity, how sweeeeeet you are ….

Here's the TOC

• 1 Prerequisites

• 2 Preparation

• 3 Lotus Connections

• 4 WebSphere Portal Search

• 5 Procedures

• 5.1 Creating Lotus Connections crawlers

• 5.2 Creating a content source

• 5.3 Troubleshooting

• 5.4 Crawling the content

• 5.5 Starting the content sources manually

Worth a read ….

Cateye HL-EL530 Cycle Light

Well, I've just taken delivery of a new front-light for my bicycle - a Cateye HL-EL530.

Haven't yet had a chance to road-test it, but I nearly fell at the first hurdle when I couldn't open the darn light to fit the batteries.

However, the internet had the answer, the internet is my friend.

Or, to be more specific, this YouTube video did the job - thanks to CycleWare for posting it.

Essentially, it's all in the twist …..

Will post a more full review tomorrow ...