Delivering Fixed Content to Oracle Portal Doug Daniels & Ken Barrette Quest Software

Agenda  Why is fixed content important?  Issues in delivering fixed content  Case Study  Solution to the problem  Questions & answers

Common Questions  Can’t we save money by not mailing statements to customers?  How can I get the reports from my production apps to my remote users faster?  How can we leverage the information in our legacy applications?  Couldn’t we just make all this available via the Web?

Portal Deployment Issues  Resistance to change  Freshness & relevance of content  Getting the content to the portal  Maintaining necessary security  Intranet? Extranet? Both? Successful Portals Save Real $$$

Give Them What They Need…  Fixed Content –Financial Reports –HR Records –Customer Statements –Invoices –Purchase Orders –Bills of Material –Sales Reports –… From… –ERP, CRM & other packaged apps –Mainframe –COLD systems

Fixed Content Matters  Represents a point in time  Document is currency of a transaction  Cannot & should not be modified  Subject to regulatory controls  Distributed to different users, located anywhere How Can You Get it to Your Portal?

Technical Issues  Modifications to the source application  Format conversion  Content processing  Security integration  Synchronization  Version storage  Client software requirements  Bandwidth considerations

User Requirements  Can’t take forever to download –Reports can be hundreds or thousands of pages  Still may want to print it –Should look like the printed page  Can I do more than just view it? –Efficient search & extract of information –Turn static content into data for analysis –Enable workflow & collaboration –I only want to see my “favorite” reports –Let me know when a new one is available

Why not just…  Convert everything to HTML or PDF? –What about security? –What if there are thousands of pages? –How do you plan to store multiple versions?  Implement a new application with a web front-end? –Do you have the time and/or budget for a large, risky project like that?  Build a data warehouse and give users ad-hoc access through the portal? –Do you really need all users with ad-hoc query access? –Some of this content should be dynamically retrieved –Creates another dependency on an already expensive project See our White Paper for more on this topic.

Case Study  Large Government Agency –Mainframe reports Logistics data, Bills of Lading, Parts manifests –Multiple geographic locations each with separate legacy systems –Information from one system needed to get distributed to users in another location –Strict security requirements –Print and electronic distribution requirements

Proposed Solution  Database Aggregation –Conduct complex queries to aggregate data –Store in a single Oracle database –Publish to the portal  The Problem –Failure in any of the queries meant information was unavailable –Variety of systems and distributed network made the process error-prone

Proposed Solution Environment Consolidated BOL Data Deliver BOL DATA to Portal 8edh3u68hjd Potential Problem 8edh3u68hjd

Ideal Solution  Deliver Reports, not Data  Accept output from any application  No modifications to source applications  No applets or controls  Multiple version storage  Page-at-a-time delivery  Oracle Portal Integration  Single Sign On integration  Supports Internet standards  Page-level security  Data extraction  Collaboration  Notification  Personalization

Consolidated Query Issue Resolved by Direct Report Distribution Consolidated BOL Reports Deliver BOL Reports to Portal

The Vista Plus Suite Vista Plus Forms Automatically generate formatted business documents Vista Plus Output Manager Central management and processing of print jobs and printers ERP Interfaces Integrates with application security models Vista Plus Enterprise report delivery, archiving & viewing

J2EE Application Server Access Management (Single Sign On) Web-based Report Viewer Report Warehouse Oracle E-Business Suite Legacy Production Apps Enterprise Output & Fixed Content Enterprise Portal Integration

Snapping in the Vista Portlet

The Vista Oracle Portlet

Result: Fixed Content Consolidation from any source

Other Considerations  JSR 168 Portlet API Spec –In final review, due September 2003  OASIS WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets)  Oracle Portal Partner

The Result  More reasons to use the portal  Single source of consolidated content  Leverages existing security  Extends useful life of legacy applications  Rich functionality for end-users  Intranet & extranet capable foundation

Come see us in booth #1002