Portal Application Module DC vs Portal Application Standalone DC

[Former Member]

I am trying to decide which way to go –

Should I create Portal Application Module DCs and include them in EARs (for deployment)

Or should I create Portal Application Standalone DCs which are already deployable?

Here are the pros and cons I can see, please correct me if I am missing anything

<u>Portal Application Module DCs</u>

-- Pros --

Since they are wrapped in an EAR for deployment, I can decide that I want to be able to deploy 3 Portal App DCs in the same EAR, Or that I can deploy the Portal App DC together with an EJB

-- Cons --

Requires a little extra work to pack the PAR in the EAR As explained <a href="http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/c6/c3e741c588c517e10000000a155106/frameset.htm">here</a>

<u>Portal Application Standalone DCs</u>

-- Pros --

Easier to develop (do not require the overhead of being packaged into an EAR)

-- Cons --

Since they form an independent deployable unit, they can not be joined together or added to other DCs in the same deployment

[Former Member]

Zach,

Your last argument that DCs cannot be joined together in one deployment is not true: You can combine multiple activities into one transport as long as they are from the same SC. So, if you have a PAR DC and EJB DC, you can let NWDI deploy them together as long as you have an activity for both of them and they are part of the same SC.

Also, do not forget to define the right dependencies (runtime/deploy time) when defining Used DCs.

Hope this shines some more light on your dilemma.

Kind regards,

Pascal Willemsen

[Former Member]

Let me rephrase my question

Why do SAP offer 2 types of DCs (Portal Application Module and Portal Application Stnadalone) while it seems that in the NWDI environment it really does not matter which one do you use... the results are the same...

[Former Member]

p.s.

FYI, here is a <a href="http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/c6/c3e741c588c517e10000000a155106/frameset.htm">document</a> that explains how to wrap a PAR in a EAR

[Former Member]

HI Engel,

AFAIK, i dont see any difference between them, because both of them will be finally packed into one SCA for deployment ( in assembly step, ofcourse the number of activities may vary which is not of that importance)

Personally, I use "portal application as standalone" for developing portal applcations.

although, it is not what you are looking for, i just wanted to post my view on these 2 types of portal DC's

thanks

[Former Member]

Suppose one day you want to create an EAR containing all your Portal DCs (or a subset of them)

if you are using standalones, you can't do that, as each one of them is deployable, and you cant wrap them in a deployabled component...

Also, I have to say, that it is hard for me to decide between 2 choices, if it seems that there is no difference between them.

There must be some difference, or SAP would not create 2 different components...

(unless the reason is some kind of backward compitability or something like that)

[detlev_beutner]

Hi everyone,

some remarks / questions:

In the "module" case, if the bug that a local deployment doesn't work (see ) would be repaired, you cannot deploy the result directly into the system landscape, as described in this thread. That's a real disadvantage and does not seem to make too much sense.

In the "standalone" case, the PAR being built when building the SDA is only to be found in the temp dir and (and that's important) - the NWDS (at least for me, SP16) doesn't offer the standalone project for local deployment (Create/Export PAR file doesn't offer this project as a possibility to choose, even if <i><nature>com.sap.ep.applicationDevelopment.portalProjectNature</nature></i> is set for it (have checked it)!?!?!

So with the latter choice, I can "simply" deploy the SDA including the PAR into the DEV system defined for this track, but there is no fast local deployment alternative offered!?

If I'm right about this, how should one use the NWDI for portal development? One definitely needs both possibilities (deploy the PAR locally / deploy the SDA into the central DEV system)!?

(Another question is about the missing DCs for the standard portal applications, which are also a showstopper in my eyes, but that's an independent question.)

I would really appreciate to get some feedback on this (how do <i>you</i> work under these circumstances?),

thanks in advance & best regards

Detlev

[Former Member]

Pascal,

Can you put me in the right direction for developing portal applications (PAR files) with NWDI? Presently, we are using portal support tools for deploying PAR files, and now we are wanting to develop our portal applications around NWDI. Is this a complicated process for migrating exiting applications (PAR development) onto NWDI?

We are hoping to define one SC and develop many DCs (existing portal applications) against one SC defined in SLD.