Oracle Webcenter Portal Interview Questions and Answers

Q : What is Oracle Webcenter Portal?
A : Oracle WebCenter Portal provides design time and runtime tools for building enterprise portals, transactional web sites, and social networking sites. It provides portal-specific features such as page hierarchies, navigation models, delegated security, customization, and others. Portals can also include features like portlets, content management system integration, personalization, social computing services, search, analytics etc.

Q : What is the difference between trinidad.config and trinidad.skins?
A : trinidad.config file is ceated when you create a webcenter portal application. This is used to register the skin-family you are going to use for your entire application. Trinidad.skins is used when we use skin as a Jar file. This file provides a mapping between the Skin Id and the actual path where the skin exists.

Q : What is the purpose of jazn-data.xml?
A : This file is used for defining the permissions and privileges for various groups of users on various task flows created in the application.

Q : What are validators and converters?
A : Validators and Convertors are used to provide conversion and validation capabilities to the ADF input components respectively. Converters convert the values on ADF forms to the type in which the application accepts them after the values are edited on the form and submitted. Validators re used to impose validations on the input components.

Q : What is the difference between databindings.cpx and datacontrol.dcx?
A : The DataBindings.cpx file contains the Oracle ADF binding context for your entire application and provides the metadata from which the Oracle ADF binding objects are created at runtime. The DataControls.dcx file is created when you register data controls on the business services. This file is not generated for Oracle ADF Business Components. It identifies the Oracle ADF model layer data control classes (factory classes) that facilitate the interaction between the client and the available business service.

Q : What are the different types of bindings in ADF?
A : ADF contains the following types of bindings:

Attribute Bindings: This is the binding to retrieve the value of a single view attribute in the iterator binding’s current view row. For eg; #{bindings.CustomerId.InputValue}

Tree Bindings: This is used for tables, tree-tables and trees. It is used to expose rows of a table in the iterator binding’s current range. Eg; All Customers-#{bindings.AllCustomers.labels.CustomerId}

Action Bindings: This binding type is used when buttons or command links are dropped on the user interface and require an action to be performed on them. We can use data control operations on them, for eg, Create, Delete, First, Last, Commit, Rollback etc.

Method Bindings: This binding is used when you want to use custom methods to be executed.

Iterator Binding: This binding is created by the application to access the ADF binding context. It contains a reference to the page bound data collection, helps access it and iterates over its data objects.

Q : Is it a mandate to configure in security in your webcenter portal application always?
A : No, if the developer does not configure the security in webcenter, the adf security gets configured by default. As part of this a default username/password is automatically created. Also, it also provides default Login and Logout pages.

Q : How do you decide whether the application should be deployed as an EAR or a WAR?
A : If the application contains run-time customizations using MDS, it must be bundles as an EAR. For simple webcenter portal application with no such customizations, WAR can be created.

Q : Can you rename the PortalWebAssets folder?
A : Yes, it can be renamed.

Q : What is JCR?
A : JCR or Java Content Repository API adapters enable user to access data stored in content management systems, such as Oracle WebCenter Content, Oracle Portal, or even your file system, available to your application.

Q : What is the use of Portal WebAssets in webcenter portal application?
A : PortalWebAssets is used to separate all the static resources in the application like HTML, image files etc.

Q : What is the difference between visible property and render property?
A : The visible property is set to true/false based on the requirement whether we want to see the field on the page or not at run time. The field or component still exists on the page, though hidden. The render property is used to conditionally load the component based on a criterion.

Q : Name a few components used for run-time editing with Oracle Composer?
A : Panel customizable, Show Detail Frame, Custom Actions, Layout Customizable.

Q : What is MDS?
A : MDS or Metadata Repository is the repository for metadata of certain deployed applications. When the user commits run-time changes, they are stored and deployes an MDS on the server.

Q : What is Portal Web Assets project?
A : It is a project by default comes whenever we created a webcenter application. It is used to store the static content of the project like images, HTML. we can also run this project in other servers independently to reduce the burden on the main application server. To do so we must remove the dependencies.

Q : What is inter-portlet communication?
A : Inter-portlet communication is achieved when an action in one portlet triggers a response in the second portlet. It’s a communication bridge between two portlets. For eg, one portlet contains a checkbox containing list of products. When i choose a product from the list and click on submit, the other portlet displays the details of the respective product.

Q : What is Oracle Composer?
A : Oracle composer provides a runtime editing tool that enables business users to edit application pages.

Q : What is policy store and identity store in OID?
A : Identity Store is used to store information about users and groups while the Policy Store is used to store information about security policies.

Q : What is the difference between portals and pagelets?
A : A pagelet is a reusable user interface component like a portlet, but while portlets were designed specifically for portals, pagelets can be run on any web page, including within a portal or other web application.

Q : Explain about MDS Repository Directory?
A : When users did some personalization to their blog and they wish to see the saved content on the next day. To achieve this, we have a directory called MDS repository directory.  It is used to preserve or delete customizations before each run.
Right click on the application and select application properties. In the application properties select Run–>MDS. In the Directory content select the options you need.