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Delta Links and SAP Content ObjectsLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

SAP objects are contained:

  • Within the initial content provided with the portal.

  • Within the business packages delivered by SAP that can be imported into the portal from the Portal Content Portfolio area in the SAP Developer Network (SDN) at http://www.sdn.sap.comInformation published on SAP site.

The content objects provided by SAP (the initial content) can be found in the Portal Catalog in the following folder: Portal Content/Content Provided by SAP . Objects in this folder belong to the SAP namespace. The ID of the object contains one of the following prefixes:

  • com.sap*

  • com.sap.pct*

Caution

Do not make any changes to objects in the SAP namespace. If you do so, and a new version of the object is then imported into the portal (for example, after a SAP NetWeaver upgrade), the object will be overwritten and you will lose all your changes.

Features

You have two possibilities for reusing objects provided by SAP and adapting them to your needs:

Scenario 1: You use the SAP objects that are delivered without a namespace.

Scenario 2: You create a delta link from an SAP object.

Activities

Scenario 1: You use the SAP objects that are delivered without a namespace

As described previously, the objects in initial content belonging to the SAP namespace can be found in the Portal Catalog in the following folder: Start of the navigation path Portal Content Next navigation step Content Provided by SAP End of the navigation path .

Caution

You may not use or change these objects.

In parallel, there are copies of these objects in two other folders of the Portal Catalog: Start of the navigation path Portal Content Next navigation step Portal Administrators End of the navigation path and Start of the navigation path Portal Content Next navigation step Portal Users End of the navigation path. These folders contain, for example:

  • The administrator roles

  • The standard user role

  • The preconfigured page for the navigation areas in the portal

You can change all the objects in these two folders as needed by opening them in the Portal Content Studio for editing. Since the objects are not in the SAP namespace, you can use or change the objects.

You can use the objects in these two folders because they have a delta link relationship to the original objects in folder Content Provided by SAP . The initial content is provided by SAP together with the delta link relationships.

Note the following for the administrator roles:

  • To change the preconfigured administration roles, always use the administrator roles in the folder Start of the navigation path Portal Content Next navigation step Portal Administrators End of the navigation path.

  • To assign administrator roles to users, always use the administrator roles in the folder Start of the navigation path Portal Content Next navigation step Portal Users End of the navigation path.

Scenario 2: You create a delta link from an SAP object

You can derive an object from an SAP object with a delta link. You assign the derived object a name in your own namespace. You do this by copying the SAP object from the Portal Catalog and inserting it elsewhere in the Portal Catalog as a delta link. See Copying an Object or Folder (Copy / Paste) .

In this way you create a reference to a delivered object that is not part of your own namespace (the source object) from an object belonging to your own namespace (the target object).

You can now change "external" contents within your own object by working on the reference object, and not on the original object delivered by SAP. The system records the changes that you make (such as deleting folders or adding folders to role hierarchies) as a delta link.

Result

In both scenarios the advantages of the delta link method become apparent:

  • You can make changes to a target object (delta link object) and the source object remains unchanged.

  • If the source object is reimported into the portal at a later time with changes to its contents, these changes appear automatically in all the derived target objects.

  • When you import the content object again, your changes to the derived (target) object are retained.