Implementing a Federated Portal Network

Organizations can implement a federated portal network using the SAP NetWeaver platform to share content between portals.

A federated portal network allows organizations with distributed portal installations, both SAP and non-SAP, to provide a single portal access point per user to portal information, services and applications distributed on portals throughout the entire organizational network. This implementation allows existing content and configurations to be utilized, and to minimize necessary administration efforts.

Providing a single portal access point vastly improves user productivity, thereby increasing the ROI of each portal implementation, and reducing the TCO by way of consolidating administrative efforts.

Note that this scenario is not intended to improve global performance issues between remote sites. However, some federated portal landscape configurations, combined with certain content types, may yield better performance rates compared to landscapes that have not implemented a federated portal network.

Architecture of the Scenario Variant

Each portal in the federation can be a producer, consumer, or both, depending on whether it exposes its content outward for other portals or uses remote content exposed by other portals.

Producer: A portal installation that provides other portals (consumers) with remote access to its locally-deployed content.
Consumer: A portal installation that accesses the remote content provided by another portal (a producer).

Each portal can support both local and remote users.

Note

If a portal in the federation functions solely as a content producer (it does not consume remote content) and does not feed content directly to users that are affiliated with the portal, you need to apply only the relevant processes in the Providing Uniform Content Access scenario variant-to ensure the portal and its content are functional and secure.

The WSRP-compliancy of SAP NetWeaver Portal provides the option for portlet interoperability, which allows you to: (i) incorporate WSRP-compliant portlets deployed on a non-SAP portal into the SAP NetWeaver federation; and (ii) expose WSRP-compliant SAP NetWeaver content for use by a non-SAP portal.

Two major use cases apply to the federated portal network scenario:

Content federation: One portal functions as the logon portal for all users and the remaining portals function as content providers.
Portal federation:Each portal installation can function as an autonomous entity serving its own content and users, but also exposing and consuming content to and from other portals in the federation.

Within the aforementioned use cases, a SAP NetWeaver consumer portal can use remote content exposed by a producer in different ways (for detailed information, see Creating Federated Portal Network Content ):

Assign users to remote roles that are defined, configured, and maintained solely on a producer portal.
Copy remote content (iViews, pages, worksets, and roles) as delta links, reuse it, and customize it locally without affecting the source content on the producer. As with standard delta links behavior, changes to source objects on the producer are automatically updated on the consumer.
Integrate WSRP portlets running on a non-SAP producer portal as local SAP NetWeaver iViews.

Figure: A federated portal network comprising five distributed locations on the same LAN, each with a different set of portal installations, sharing content with one another. Users log on to the portal in their location, but in fact gain seamless access to back-end applications residing in other locations on the network. The remote role assignment and remote delta link modes are used to share content between SAP NetWeaver portals only, while WSRP application sharing is typically used for SAP NetWeaver and non-SAP portal content sharing.

Each location is a producer, consumer, or both.

Location 1 has three portal installations: a non-SAP portal, a SAP NetWeaver content producer, and a SAP NetWeaver consumer, which is the logon portal for all users in that location.
Location 2 is a SAP NetWeaver producer. It has its own users and local content, which it exposes outward, but does not consume remote content from other portals.
Location 3 is a SAP NetWeaver consumer that does not create or develop its own content, but serves its users with remote-based content only.
Location 4 is a non-SAP producer. It does not serve any local users, but provides remote applications to other portals.
Location 5 is a SAP NetWeaver Portal. It functions as dual producer and consumer, serving its users with local and remote-based content, and shares its content outward to another portal.

Required Usage Types of SAP NetWeaver

To use this scenario variant, NetWeaver-based portals require the installable units described in Running an Enterprise Portal .

IT Processes of the Scenario Variant

Information about implementing a federated portal network is divided into the following Information Technology (IT) processes. Each one provides the necessary information for administering and managing an aspect of the federation:

Process	Description
(1) Configuring the Federated Portal Network	System administrators on the producer and consumer connect the portals to the federated portal network, and prepare the portals so that content can be used by remote consumers.
(2) Creating Federated Portal Network Content	Content or user administrators on the consumer portal select the relevant remote content on a producer portal, and then create or reuse it on their portal.
(3) Maintaining the Federated Portal Network	Content and system administrators on the consumer and producer portals maintain, manage and monitor their respective portals and the content running in them to ensure an optimized portal runtime environment.
(4) Using the Federated Portal Network	Business users log on to their portal (or a remote portal if they have access to the same network) and use it to perform their daily business-related tasks. Remote content can still be personalized and user mapping can be performed.

Related Information

The following role-specific guides contain further information about this IT scenario:

Task	Documentation Reference
Installation and Upgrade	Technology Consultant's Guide
Configuration	Solution Manager or Implementing a Federated Portal Network (in SAP NetWeaver Technology Consultant's Guide)
Administration	SAP NetWeaver Technical Operations Manual (TOM): Implementing a Federated Portal Network
Security	SAP NetWeaver Security Guide: Implementing a Federated Portal Network
Implementation^*	SAP NetWeaver Portal Documentation: Implementing a Federated Portal Network

^* Contains the full documentation set for implementing this scenario variant.