IBM Portal Database and Authentication

I have a couple of questions regarding IBM Portal Portlets.

I have just stumbled into the realm of Portlets - and as far as I am concerned was dropped into the deep end. Having to work on a IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1

We are still in the evaluation stage - and three things that I haven't been able to find clear answers to yet.

1. Database - is there one single Database that also gets used by the installed Portlets - or do you configure DB individually on a per Portlet Basis?

2. Authorization and Authentication - how can a Portlet get hold of the User and the rights the user has?

3. Are there any known c开发者_JS百科onstraints in using JSR-301 compliant JSF Bridges instead of bog standard Portlets?

Thanks in advanced.

I haven't used Portal 7 yet, but I have used pretty much every other version, so my apologies if you are using 7 and this information doesn't fit exactly.

1) Database: when you install portal, you configure a database it uses to store portal configuration (and sometimes user rights as well, although this aspect can be set up using a custom user registry like LDAP). If you don't have an already dedicated DB, Portal will use its packaged DB, Cloudscape/Derby. This DB can be completely separate from the DB that the portlets use to manipulate data unrelated to configuration. E.g. if your portlet is displaying inventory for a bike shop, the DB holding that info can be accessed in the normal web application way through a datasource set up in the WAS GUI.

2) For a lot of scenarios, your portlet doesn't need to know the user's rights, it won't render the portlet unless the user has been assigned the correct rights via Portal Administration. But in the cases in which you would need to know the user's rights, they can be accessed via the Portal User Management Architecture. Here's a good whitepaper on the subject: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/websphere/PUMA_scenarios.pdf

3) Known constraints? You may have to google for that specifically, but I will say that unless you use IBM's custom JSF bridge, there may not be a lot of support from IBM's technical issue team if you come up against a problem. However, the support guys are usually pretty helpful, I find. Don't let that stop you from trying though :)

The two resources that I use pretty exhaustively are the InfoCenter http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r1/index.jsp and the developer forums on IBM Developerworks.

Best of luck, and welcome to the dark side!