Dynamic Visitor Tools

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A feature in WebLogic Portal that is not well known is the Dynamic Visitor Tools (DVT), a sample added to WebLogic Portal 10.2 or later that allows users to customize the portal exeperience by simply dragging and dropping portlets. New portlets can also be easily added by dragging them from the DVT menu bar which appears at the top when DVT is active. If you have not had a chance to check out DVT previously then I would encourage you to visit the WLP demo site at http://wlp.bea.com and give it a whirl. Once you have registered or logged in, click the customize link in the top right corner to play with the DVT sample.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:12 AM | Categories: WebLogic | Permalink |

Manually Migrating a Server

Friday, April 17, 2009

I was recently helping a client setup whole server migration where one server in the cluster hosted a singleton JMS queue, as a result the client weanted to use whole server migration so that the server would automatically migrate to a new machine in case of failure. We also wanted to test manually migrating this server to an alternate machine in case a planned outage was required. Unfortunately it turned out that the process for manually migrating a server was not obvious, changing the server on the migration page did nothing and the server stubbornly continued to restart on the current host machine.

After doing some poking around, we found the following process worked.

• Stop the migratable server
• Change the machine to the server you want it to boot on in the Admin Console
• Change the list of candidate servers so that the machine you want to boot on is first in the list.
• The target machine in Servers|Control|Migration should reflect the machine you chose in b automatically but confirm it.
• Start the server, now starts on the new server.

I assume the existing process works the way it does because this would be the desired way to working when performing a failback, thus for a planned outage follow the steps above.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 10:34 AM | Categories: WebLogic | Permalink |

WebCenter Interaction and RAC

Thursday, April 16, 2009

I recently had to help a client decipher some older G6 documentation about using the Plumtree/ALUI/WCI portal with RAC and thought it might be useful to post the distilled instructions here.

A. Create a tnsnames.ora file in your PT_HOME/settings directory that contains something similar to the text below. Note replace the HOST and SERVICE_NAME entries with values that make sense for your system.

RAC = 
  (DESCRIPTION = 
(ADDRESS_LIST= 
  (FAILOVER = ON) // Connection-Time Failover 
  (LOAD_BALANCE = ON) // Client Load x 
  (ADDRESS= (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = rac1)(PORT = 1521)) 
  (ADDRESS= (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = rac2)(PORT = 1521)) 
) 
(CONNECT_DATA= 
  (SERVICE_NAME = PLUM10.plumtree.com) 
) 
  ) 
 

B. Open the file configuration.xml in a text editor, look for the line:

    <component name="opendb:DBConnection/oracle" type="http://www.plumtree.com/config/component/types/opendb">

Under this line, insert the following entries:

<setting name="database-connection:rac-tnsnames-file">
<value xsi:type="xsd:string">C:/alui65/settings/tnsnames.ora</value>
</setting>
<setting name="database-connection:rac-tnsnames-data-source">
<value xsi:type="xsd:string">RAC</value>
</setting>

Obviously replace my hard code C:/alui65/settings/tnsnames.ora with your value. Note the data-source value used above, RAC, must match what is tnsnames.ora (the RAC= at the beginning)

C. Repeat step B for the following lines in configuration.xml:

 
<component name="aluidirectory:openjdbc" type="http://www.plumtree.com/config/component/types/opendb">
<component name="activityservice:persistence" type="http://www.plumtree.com/config/component/types/opendb">

D. Just do a search of the file for your database SID to make sure no other spots were missed.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:57 AM | Categories: WCI | Permalink |

Calibrating a Television

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

The Home Theater fairy, the lesser known cousin of the tooth fairy, visited me last week and blessed me with a new television. I ended up getting a great deal on a Samsung LN52A850 set and with spousal approval went and pulled the trigger. I had been thinking about getting a new television for some time as my 46" Samsung just felt a little small in the space we had and the new 52" set provides more of the larger picture we are used to from the theaters.

With a new set however comes the inevitable calibrating of the set in order to get the picture just right. In the past I have to admit I have been guilty of calibrating by simply using a movie and the Mark 1 eyeball which seems to be losing its efficiency with age. When browing the thread on calibrating the A850 at avsforum there was a post linking to a free calibration DVD put together by some of the avsforum members.

I've only had a chance to have a quick look at it but what I have seen so far is pretty impressive for a free effort. The disc contains various patterns that are displayed through a Blu-ray player or other HD source that allow you to perform a basic calibration without equipment. The disc is burned from an .iso and is navigable using a simple menu, it took me all of five minutes to burn the disc and start playing with it using my PS3. While the burning process is simple, what really makes the process easy is the sixteen page PDF document that accompanies the disc and guides you through the process of calibrating your set.

The disc allows you to calibrate the grayscale, colors, contrast, brightness, sharpness and other parameters of the television without having to use any tools. While the final results are not going to be as good as an ISF calibration they should be more then sufficient for the average joe. One thing I found useful on the Samsung set, which I assume would be available on all recent Samsung sets, is the availability of a blue mode. This blue mode allows you to adjust the colors on the set without requiring a blue filter by only displaying the color blue. In this mode different colors which have a blue component are still visibile and colors can be tuned by using the test pattern tweaking the settings until the blue appears identical.

The AVS HD 709 disc is a highly recommended tool and you owe it to yourself to check it out.

AVS HD 709 - Blu-ray, HD DVD, & MP4 Calibration

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:27 PM | Categories: Home Theater | Permalink |