SAP EP – Netweaver Portal

Symptom

This note covers all information not included in the official “Implementing a Federated Portal Network” scenario documentation provided on SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04s/helpdata/en/5b/9f2d4293825333e10000000a155106/frameset.htm. The information in this note includes known integration issues, workarounds, updated information and restrictions in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 (2004s). Refer to the contents of this central note and to other related notes that may be linked to this note.
For a list of general known limitations of the portal in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 (2004s), see SAP Note 853509. We recommend you review the limitation note (853509) before reviewing this note.

Other terms

SAP NetWeaver Portal, federated portal network, WSRP, federation, remote role assignment, remote delta links, remote content copy, portal federation, content federation, producer, consumer, FPN
Reason and Prerequisites

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Solution

General

Current considerations, workarounds & restrictions:
When a producer blocks access from a consumer, the block is applied only after the dedicated cache on the consumer is cleaned.When a consumer blocks access to a producer, the block is applied to the current users only after a new browser session is opened by them on the consumer portal.The consumer cannot monitor activities performed on the producer content (portal activity reporting and Activity Data Colector (ADC) cross-portals is not supported).Themes: To enable a continuous end user experience and display all local and remote content with the same theme (the theme of the consumer), you should import the consumers’ theme to all producers. You do not need to assign this theme to any users; however the same theme with the same ID should be available to render the content accordingly.Transitive content sharing is not supported. In other words, a portal cannot share remote-based content that is consumed from another remote producer portal. You can only have direct consumer-producer relationships, and not three or more levels in a federation.FPN administrative tasks like assigning remote roles to users or creating remote delta links to the local pcd should be performed only by registered users – not guest users. This is due to FPN services that require low security zoneModify registration option (available since NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 13): If the target host and port are changed and saved the previous values are not available and not restoreable anymore.Modify registration option (available since NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 13): The current flow requires some change in the producer object editor and only then the “modify registration” option is enabled.Configuring the Navigation Cache – Navigation Cache preloading – It is not possible e to preload remote roles using the CachePreloaderService. This service can be used to upload only locally defined roles. Configuring the navigation cache cannot be used for the gpn navigation connector. For more details, refer to note 1172433.Locality of portal services – In general, with all kinds of portal integration options (standard AppIntegrator or FPN), portal service that runs on remote portal runs locally on the machine it was called from. That it, in FPN scenario the portal service that is invoked from the producer portal is running on the producer local. This is unless the service is doing some special treatment for this scenario

Solved restrictions:
‘External host name’ value is copied by default from the ‘P4 host name’ property instead of from the ‘Host name’ property.
FIXED WITH SAP NETWEAVER 7.0 SPS 16: The correct producer object property – ‘Host name’ is set to ‘External host name’ property by default. This property is editable using the property editor of the producer object.The detailed navigation entry “Configure My Producer Profile” does not contain any content.
FIXED WITH SAP NETWEAVER 7.0 SPS 12: The option has been removed from the Detailed Navigation entry under “Federated Portal”.All producer systems must also be created on the consumer.
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 07: Systems do not have to be created on the consumer anymore.Consumer and producer portals must reside in the same domain.
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 09: This can be achieved using reverse proxies that support portals in multiple domains. A detailed document that describes how to implement a federated portal network whereby the producer and the consumer are not in the same domain, is available at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/howtoguides SAP NetWeaver 2004s, User Productivity Enablement, Running an Enterprise Portal.Reverse proxy is not supported: Despite being documented in the release notes as supported, usage of a reverse proxy in FPN scenario has not been validated. Reverse proxy as part of the FPN environment is not supported when using remote role assignment.
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 09: A configuration guide provides instructions on how to implement a federated portal network with reverse proxy as part of the environment (can be found at: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/howtoguides SAP NetWeaver 2004s, User Productivity Enablement, Running an Enterprise Portal, “How to Set up Federated Portal Network Scenarios with Reverse Proxies”).Setting up trust on the producer: The following documentation (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw2004s/helpdata/en/43/2235260b413fe1e10000000a11466f/frameset.htm) contains an error. For the parameter “trustedsys1″ in Visual Admin, Security Provider the right description is: “Client ID: Specifies the client ID as specified in the login.ticket_client property of the UME Provider in the consumer portal. For a Java stack, the default client ID is 000; however, in an Add-In installation, the client ID must be unique and therefore cannot be 000.”
DOCUMENTATION FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 11.When registering the consumer to the producer (”Producer Registration”), the option “Your Consumer URL” must contain the P4 port of the consumer minus 4. (For example, if the consumer’s P4 port is 50005 then the consumer URL should be as follows: http://myportal.com:50001)
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 13: The UI for registering the producer were adjusted (no consumer URL field available anymore).The portal does not enforce using unique names for the consumer name. However, to avoid runtime errors, you must ensure that each consumer portal uses a unique name.
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 14: you cannot register two producers objects with the same consumer name.When an administrator creates a new producer with the id that is already used by an existing system as an alias, the primary alias for the producer is not created automatically (as expressed by the warning message). When administrator adds manually a primary alias to the producer (in producer alias editor), the UME is not notified and the primary alias does not appear in the data source list for the Identity Management UI. Workaround: Create a new producer with id that is different from an existing system alias.
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 18 / EHP1 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 03When an administrator creates a new producer with an id that is already used by an existing system as alias, the primary alias for the producer is not created automatically (as expressed by the warning message). When administrators tries to delete this producer, the delete wizard hangs without any progress. Workaround: Delete the producer object manually using the PCD inspector tool. The producer is located at pcd:NetWeaver_content_producers.
FIXED with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 18 / EHP1 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 03
Please find below list of dedicated notes per topic:
1295703 FPN: User Persistence
1295704 FPN: Remote Role Assignment
1295705 FPN: Remote Content Copy
1295706 FPN: Remote Delta Link
1295708 FPN: Applications
1295709 FPN: WSRP
1080080 FPN: System copy