As noted in the Introduction to ALUI Development, AquaLogic User Interaction combines portal, content management, collaboration, integration and search technologies. All ALUI components can be extended and leveraged by custom applications.
The Programmable Remote Client (PRC) provides an object-oriented way to call into ALUI's SOAP APIs. The PRC API frees you from serializing SOAP messages and minimizes the amount of data that travels between the portal and the remote server, improving performance. The PRC can be used to write applications that access the portal, Collaboration, Publisher and ALI Search, including pagelets/portlets, command-line tools, and virtually any Web application. For examples, see PRC Use Cases.
The PRC is included with both the Java and .NET versions of the AquaLogic User Interaction Development Kit (IDK). The Java version includes Apache AXIS 1.0; the .NET version uses the platform-native SOAP client stack. Java clients can call .NET portals and vice-versa; the PRC takes care of the communication between AXIS and .NET.
Before beginning any development, you should understand the underlying system. The ALI Object Model is the foundation for the portal's interaction with remote servers. This page provides a conceptual overview.
The topics that follow explain how to use the PRC to implement a range of functionality, and provide examples and sample code.
Initiating a PRC Session with the Portal: To communicate with the portal via the PRC, you must first establish a session with the portal. This session is used to manipulate portal objects via the PRC.
Remote Portal APIs: The portal provides the framework for applications and integrates AquaLogic User Interaction components into a cohesive Web work environment. Administration is the core of the portal, where all portal objects and operations are configured. The PRC's remote APIs provide access to key administrative components, as explained in the following topics:
Object Management: Everything in the portal (except documents) is represented by a portal object stored in the ALI database. The IObjectManager interface allows you to access portal objects from your remote services.
Portlet Operations: There are many settings and options that apply only to ALI portlets. In addition to manipulating portlet objects via IObjectManager, the PRC supports advanced portlet operations.
Knowledge Directory Operations: The portal Knowledge Directory stores links to documents in a hierarchical structure of folders and subfolders. The IDocument* interfaces allow you to query for documents and document properties, create new documents, and edit the properties for existing documents.
User Operations: Portal users are organized into groups and sub-groups. The IUserManager and IUserGroupManager interfaces allow you to leverage the portal's user hierarchy.
Portal Jobs: A job is a collection of related portal operations, managed by the Automation Service. Using the IJobManager interface, you can start an existing portal job remotely.
Remote Search APIs: ALI Search indexes and searches all the documents, information, applications, communities, discussions, Web sites and other content accessible through the portal. Using the remote search API, you can query document (card), folder, user and Community objects using a standard request-response model. You can add multiple constraints and filter searches by location or object type.
Remote Collaboration APIs: ALI Collaboration helps people to work together via the Web, supporting tasks, projects, communities, calendars, discussions, and document sharing with version control. You can create, query and manage Collaboration projects, tasks, documents, and discussions from remote applications. You can also use the remote API to embed collaborative components and functions into any Web application delivered through the ALUI framework.
Remote Publisher APIs: ALI Publisher provides the Web publishing system for deploying content-driven applications, like a customer support knowledge base or sales support center. Using the remote API, you can create and publish many types of Web content, including articles, customer profiles, employee reports, news stories, and so forth.
These pages provide information and detailed instructions for extending ALUI functionality. For an introduction to how the portal works, see the Overview of AquaLogic Interaction. For a full listing of development topics, see the table of contents. For a full list of interfaces and methods, see the IDK API documentation.
Note: You must configure the portal or Ensemble to send a login token to any pagelet/portlet that uses the PRC. In the portal, this option is on the Advanced Settings page of the Portlet Web Service editor. In Ensemble, this option is on the CSP tab in Resource configuration.
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