Using Object-Based Navigation in a Federated Portal Network 

Object-based navigation (OBN) is an advanced navigational concept based on business objects and business object extensions called operations. Operations are launched by user-initiated client‑side events or server requests; they are implemented by target applications, such as iViews and pages.

For more information about OBN, see Object-Based Navigation in the portal administration documentation.

The implementation of a federated portal network supports OBN in both remote role assignment and remote delta link modes. The federated portal network also supports OBN, even if the iViews were created on an SAP NetWeaver 7.1 producer.

However, the special remote producer-consumer scenario causes OBN navigation to be resolved during runtime differently than in a single-portal environment.

This requires the administrators of the federated portal network to be aware of the differences and take some additional steps to ensure proper object-based navigation.

The WSRP application sharing mode does not support object-based navigation.

Role Assignment Requirements

Relevant for remote role assignment mode only

When working in remote role assignment, OBN resolving takes place on the producer. The iView containing the OBN source link must exist on the producer. Activating an OBN link in an iView that exists on the consumer portal initiates a target search on the consumer only.

OBN resolving in the federated portal network scenario is user-based, so the one-to-one user mapping between the consumer portal and producer portal demands that the user role set on the consumer encompass the corresponding role set on the producer. In other words, the roles of the user on the producer must have corresponding roles contained in the user role set on the consumer.

The user on the consumer side may have additional roles that the respective user on the producer does not have.

Conversely, OBN does not search for targets in roles that the user has on the producer, which do not exist on the consumer.

Note also: In remote role assignment mode all content editing is done on the producer, including the editingobject-based navigation, such as the removal and addition of implementations and changes in priority.

Delta Link Information

Relevant for remote delta link mode only

When working in remote delta link mode, the resolution of OBN calls takes place on the consumer. Object-based navigation support for remote delta link usage includes two methods of copying business objects and operations from producer to consumer:

·        Copying a business object

·        Copying an iView or page, which is an OBN target

In this case, the business object upon which the target is based is copied to the consumer portal.

Behavior and Recommendations

It is possible, when copying a target iView to the consumer, that the business object, upon which the iView is based, already exists on the consumer. In this case, you can expect the following behavior:

●      The business object on the consumer will be overwritten; its location is not important. The folder structure on the consumer does not need to mirror that of the producer.

If the business object does not exist on the consumer, a folder created on the consumer and the producer business object is copied to it.

●      The business object operations on the consumer will be consolidated with those of the producer business object. This means that:

¡        Operations existing on the producer, but which the consumer business object does not have, are added to the consumer business object.

¡        Operations of the consumer business object, which have the same ID as operations of the producer business object, are overwritten—meaning that the non-unique properties of the operation (name and priority) will change, if they are different on the producer.

Before copying an iView from the producer, check if it is a target iView and, if so, what effect the copy, and possible consolidation, would have on navigation on the consumer. This can be checked on the producer, in the Object-Based Navigation Editor of the specific iView. If the iView is from a producer using a SAP NetWeaver 7.1 portal (or higher), see the documentation for the Object-Based Navigation Editor at help.sap.com/netweaver for the respective version.

Synchronization

●      Changes made to the properties of iViews on the producer are reflected in the properties of the corresponding copies on the consumer; unless the properties have been modified directly in the target delta link object on the consumer.

●      Changes made to the properties of business objects on the producer are not reflected in the properties of the corresponding copies on the consumer.

However, upon the synchronization of a target iView, which was modified on the consumer, the properties of its respective business object are also synchronized.

Runtime Limitation

A content developer may create an OBN source iView to call the OBN service to run code that processes a number of target iViews and displays them for the user to choose from, during runtime, in a context menu accessible from the source iView.

When in remote delta link mode, the federated portal network does not support this implementation of OBN, regardless or whether the source iView calling the OBN service was created in NetWeaver 7.1 or in NetWeaver 7.0 and then upgraded to 7.1.