If your application depends on another application or service, you need to reference this application by defining either a public or private sharing reference in the portalapp.xml. However, be aware that public sharing references cause redundant dependencies between portal applications, which may result in increasing application load with a high impact on performance, so consider the following rule:
If the referenced application, library or service has to be used in the API of the portal application, use a SharingReference.
If the reference is for an internal implementation of the portal application, use a PrivateSharingReference.
For more information, see Calling Java EE Applications from Portal Applications.
Note
The deployment and the runtime sharing references are not necessarily the same; make sure you adapt the references in each case separately.