Hiden Gem of Oracle WebCenter: Spaces Automatic Services Configuration

Spaces supports automatic configuration of certain Oracle WebCenter Portal services.  Mean, you don’t need to set discussion, portlet, UCM services etc from the EM manually. This feature is available from 11G PS3 onward.

The Automatic Service Configuration only worked if the following conditions are met:

• Spaces and the target component must be installed in the same domain.
• The managed server of the target component must have an explicit listening address. If its listening address is empty or null or "localhost", then it must have a system associated to it that has an explicit address.
• The target component (like discussions, ucm, pagelet etc) must not be deployed to a cluster.
• You must start the managed servers associated to the WebCenter Portal services first. Then, start the WC_Spaces managed server.

Currently, automatic Service Configuration is implemented for the following Services:

Component/Service	Default Connection Name	Specific Rule
Discussions and Announcements services	WebCenterSpaces-Discussions	The user granted the Administrative role exists in discussions.
Documents service	WebCenterSpaces-ucm
Pagelet producer	WebCenterSpaces-PageletProducer
Personalization service	Conductor-WCPSSpaces  and Properties-WCPSSpaces
Preconfigured portlet producers	wc- OmniPortlet wc-WebClipping wc-WSRPTools
Worklist service and Spaces workflows	WebCenterSpaces- Worklist

Every time you start Spaces it will try to create the connections unless they already exist. This will be true until the service is configured for the first time unless you disable automatic service configuration. If the automatic configuration fails for a specific component, then you will have to manually configure the service.

You can verify from the EM that service connections are automatically configured for the Spaces application when you start the managed servers.

If required, you can disable the auto-configuration feature by setting the following Java property in domain_home/bin/setDomainEnv.sh  (on UNIX) or domain_home\bin\setDomainEnv.cmd (on Windows). 

-Dwebcenter.spaces.disableAutoConfigure=true

Reference:

Oracle® Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal
11g Release 1 (11.1.1.6.0)


4.2 Working with Oracle WebCenter Portal: Spaces
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/install.1111/e12001/wc_components.htm#CHDGEJFG

Start WebLogic’s Managed Server without Username and Password manually

After you installed Fusion Middleware products like WebCenter, UCM, SOA etc you have plenty of Managed Servers (MS) and you have to enter username and password when you start each Managed Server (WC_Spaces, UCM_server1, IBR_server1, WC_Portlet, WC_Utilities, BAM_server1 etc) from the command line.  To make it automatic so that you don’t need to enter username and password. Follow the following steps:-

Apply to all the managed servers (Unsecured and simple way)

If you want that all my Managed Servers (MS) will not prompt for username and password then this approach is for you. In this approach, you just need to change one file and all the MSs will not prompt you for username and password without doing any change in individual MS. Follow the following instructions:-

1.       Go to bin of weblogic domain. In my case, following is the domain path:- <Middleware-Home>\user_projects\domains\<doman>\bin i.e. C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\wc_domain\bin

2.       Open the startManagedWebLogic.cmd in any text editor

3.       Set the following two variables with your weblogic admin user and its password

Set WLS_USER=<Admin-User-Name>
Set WLS_PW=<Admin-User-Password>

4.       Save the file and now start your MS from the command line.

startManagedWeblogic <MS-Name> <Admin-Server-IP:Port>

i.e. startManagedWeblogic WC_Spaces http://127.0.0.1:7001

If everything is ok then it should not prompt you for username and password.

Pls note that username and password will remain unencrypted.

Apply to individual MS changes (Secured and recommended way)

If you want to go with secured way and want to configure few servers that will run without asking for username and password then you need to go with this approach.

1.       (First time only). If you not started your MS before, you need to start it once from the command line so that it create required directories inside <Middleware-Home>\user_projects\domains\<domain> \servers\<MS-Name> i.e. C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\wc_domain\servers\UCM_server1

2.       Once started successfully, shutdown it.

3.       Create a security folder  in <MS-Name> folder

4.       Copy the boot.properties file from <MiddlewareHome>\user_projects\domains\wc_domain\servers\AdminServer and past it into newly created security folder.

Pls note that you can also create a boot.properties, just open any text editor like notepad and enter the following content:-
username=weblogic
password=welcome1
Don’t worry about plain text username and password. Once you start your MS, username and password will be encrypted with AES and will remain encrypted.