Inside IBM WCM : Part2 - How to stop a background WCM library delete

There are occasions when you wish to stop a background Library Deletion process.

First thing to realise is that a WCM Library delete using the WCM Libraries portlet triggers an EJB which does the job. The EJB will lock the library (icon will be greyed out) prior to the start of the process.

In order to stop the deletion process you will need to find the EJB's, remove them, unlock the library and then restart the server.

Firstly, find the EJB id's using the findEJBTimers script. You need the java server name for this:

For UNIX/Linux:

findEJBTimers.sh WebSphere_Portal -all

(For windows use the "bat" equivalent)

This script will return a list of timer numbers. Make a note of these numbers

Next run the script passing the timer number in as a parameter:

cancelEJBTimers.sh WebSphere_Portal -timer xxxx

Repeat for all timers previously listed

Next, you MUST unlock the libraries otherwise the EJB timers will simply restart again when the server restarts. To unlock the libraries, you must use a WCM connect URL:

http://host:port/wps/wcm/connect?MOD=UnlockLibrary&library=libraryname

With the library unlocked you can not restart the Portal.

The delete library task will now be terminated and the delete icon will display correctly.

Inside IBM WCM : Part 1 - When does an item get saved on the subscriber?

Imagine you have a single WCM authoring server and a single WCM delivery server. You set up a syndicator/subscriber pair between them.

As you know, when you examine a content item, the "Last modified date" of the item is shown in the "History" secion of the UI. This is the date the item is saved on the authoring server. But how can you determine when it arrived at the delivery server? If you knew this you could tell how long syndication took to move the item.

The issue here is that if you look at the copy of the same item on the delivery server, the "History" section is identical to that of the authoring server.

We know it must have taken some time for the item to syndicate from syndicator to subscriber - but how can you determine when it actually arrived?

The JCR

All WCM content is stored in the associated Java Content Repository (JCR) which is defined as part of the portal configuration.

The JCR is implemented as a set of tables in a relational database but it is not possible to simply query the relational database since it contains literally thousands of tables and indexes which are, for the most part, human unreadable.

In order to investigate what is going on in the jcr you will need a special portlet - the "WCM Support tools portlet". You can download this portlet from Lotus Greennhouse or request it directly from your IBM rep.

Install it like any other portlet.

With this tool, you can browse the JCR and view all properties of items stored within. Choose the "Browse nodes" option from the menu.

Content items are stored as a series of "nodes" in the jcr. Nodes have "property values" and can have child nodes.

All the WCM nodes are children of the "contentRoot" node in the "ROOTWORKSPACE" workspace. This will be listed under "Children" of the "ROOTWORKSPACE"

The children of node represent libraries shown with titles of icm:libraries

The children of a library node can be thought of as set of "folders" in which items are stored. For example the child "Content" will contain all content items. A full set would be:

• Authoring Templates
• Components
• Content
• Presentation Templates
• System
• Taxonomies
• UI Controls
• Taxonomies

Within the "Content" node you will find site nodes

Within Site nodes you will find site area nodes that match the Site Framework that is visible to the WCM UI.

You can traverse this hierarchy until you find your content item.

Once you find the item and open it, you will notice that it has many properties listed.

The "jcr:lastModifed" property represents the date that WCM last modifed the item. This one is put there by WCM.

However the "icm:lastModified" property is the one that contains the time that the item actually arrived in the JCR. Comparing these two dates on the subscriber gives you some indication of how long the syndication process took to complete for this item. On the syndicator it will show how quickly the save occurred after being processed by the UI (typically a few milliseconds)

Doctor Who Pewter chess from Danbury mint

I really wanted a single source somewhere on the internet that lists the complete Danbury Mint Doctor Who chess pieces. Could not find it - so I compiled my own. As follows.

There are 66 pieces in the entire collection

38 pieces in the original set (with presentation box that doubles as a board)

24 pieces in the expansion set

4 pieces in the 1990 Movie Expansion set

Expansion set had their own storage option of a small display cabinet in the shape of the Tardis.

Pieces as follow:

01. Red King - William Hartnell as The Doctor

02. Red King - Patrick Troughton as The Doctor

03. Red King - Jon Pertwee as The Doctor

04. Red King - Tom Baker as The Doctor

05. Red King - Peter Davidson as The Doctor

06. Red King - Colin Baker as The Doctor

07. Red King - Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor

08. Red Queen - Louise Jameson as Leela

09. Red Bishop - Kamelion (Robotic partner)

10. Red Bishop - Nicholas Courtney as The Brigadier (Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart)

11. Red Knight - Matthew Waterhouse as Audric

12. Red Knight - Frazer Hines as Jamie (Jamie McCrimmon)

13. - 14. Red Rook - The Tardis

15. - 22. Red Pawn - K9

23. Black King - Roger Delago as The Master

24. Black Queen - Kate O'Mara as Rani

25. Black Bishop - Cyberman

26. Black Bishop - Davros

27. Black Knight - Ice Warrior

28. Black Knight - Sea Devil

29. - 30. Black Rook - Sontaran

31. - 38. Black Pawn - Dalek

Next came the first expansion set comprising 24 pieces

39. Red Queen - Carole Anne Ford as Susan Foreman

40. Red Queen - Wendy Padbury as Zoe (Zoe Herriot)

41. Red Queen - Katy Manning as Jo Grant

42. Red Queen - Janet Fielding as Tegan (Tegan Jovanka)

43. Red Queen - Nicola Bryant as Peri (Perpugilliam Brown)

44. Red Queen - Sophie Aldred as Ace

45. Red Bishop - John Levene as Benton (Sergeant Benton)

46. Red Bishop - Castellan

47. Red Bishop - Alpha Centauri

48. Red Bishop - Richard Franklin as Captain Yates (Mike Yates)

49. Red Knight - Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan

50. Red Knight - Mark Strickson as Turlough (Vislor Turlough)

51. Black Bishop - Davros

52. Black Bishop - Omega

53. Black Bishop - Morbius

54. Black Bishop - Sharez Jek

55. Black Knight - Terileptil

56. Black Knight - Yeti

57. Black Knight - Silurian

58. Black Knight - Zygon

59. - 60. Black Rook - Robots of Death

61. - 62. Black Rook - The Masters Tardis (Grandfather clock)

Then came the 1990 Movie Expansion set with characters from the Doctor Who film. This set comprised four pieces as follows:

63. Red King - Paul McGann as The Doctor

64. Red Queen - Daphne Ashbrook as Grace (Dr Grace Holloway)

65. Red Knight - Yee Jee as Chang Lee

66. Black King - Eric Roberts as The Master

SQL30082N Security processing failed with reason "42" ("ROOT CAPABILITY REQUIRED"). SQLSTATE=08001

Strange one this. I had a VM Portal 6.1.0.3 running on WAS 7.0.0.7 and I wanted to get this to the latest fix packs. Firstly had to install WAS 7.0.0.17 and the associated JVM.

Next I upgraded Portal to 6.1.0.5.

Next I installed current CF for portal (CF14)

All was working as expected.

Next I installed CF49 for WCM. It did not install correctly so I had to uninstall.

After uninstalling, I could not connect correctly to DB2.

The problem returned was that in the title of this post.

In order to diagnose this, I initially attempted to use Portal ConfigEngine validate-database-connection. This gave no joy. Next I tried the db2 command prompt.

Sure enough the issue was at DB2 level since I could no longer login to any database.

Searching around gave the the answer:

My DB2 installation is a "non-root" install. Apparently Server authentication is not enabled during a non-root install.

So to fix this I simply needed to enable server authentication with:

$ su root

# cd /instance

# ./db2iudt

This seemed to do the trick and now Portal can connect to DB2 without issue.

Note that this only seemed to be in an issue after upgrading to 6.1.0.5 , with a failed installation of a CF. Before that failure of the CF, all was well

Hope this saves someone some time.

/Marcus

Treat portal pages like content

Our Domisphere Portal Manager product has been able to create "draft" portal pages on the IBM Portal/WCM platform for some time. However, we have now added versioning capability to the system.

It means that portal pages can be treated very much like content pages and authors can view previous versions of a particular portal page. Since Domisphere holds these pages in the live environment, it is now very easy tocrecreate or reuse previous page layouts in your IBM WCM/Portal installation.

For more information, contact Hayley O'Conner:

Direct Dial Tel: 01793 411182

email: hoconner@infosys.co.uk

IBM Portal with IBM WCM multivariate and A/B testing support

Multivariate content management is becoming increasingly popular but the IBM Portal / IBM WCM platform does not support this natively.
To fill this gap InfoSys Ltd (www.infosys.co.uk) have developed an add-on WCM/Portal "accellerator" that delivers both multivariate and A/B testing capability to the platform.
The product is called Domisphere and significantly enhances usability, functionality and flexibility to Portal.
The multivariate capabilities allow multiple portal pages to be delivered on a single URL. The domisphere "Context Engine" is implemented as a portal servlet filter and can use plug-in rules to select different page variants. Meta data tags are added automatically so can be process by Web Analytics tools.
Bringing multivariate capability to IBM Portal / IBM WCM is just one of the many enhancements that Domisphere adds.
Some others are:

• Draft portal pages that follow draft content.
  
• Preview draft portal pages and multiple draft content items together
• Facility to view draft items in WCM menus
• A configurable custom workflow action toolkit that adds branching capabilites to WCM workflows
• In context creation, editing and approval
• UI tooling to enhance in context exprience
• Site area grafting (allowing multiple site frameworks to appear as a single framework)
• Automatic deployment of portal pages into production (no need for Portal admins to create pages for content items)
• Full site navigation of portal controlled by WCM (no need for Portal admins to creat page hierarchies for navigation)
• Better meta data handling for search engine optimisation

And more besides