Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) is a standard for presentation-oriented web services created by OASIS that allows for the plug-and-play of visual, user-facing web services with portals or other intermediary web applications. WSRP allows for remote portal resources in the network to be available in your local portal. BEA released a WSRP technology preview kit in February 2004 and official support was added to the product in July 2004. You must use WebLogic Portal 8.1 SP3 or later with WSRP.

If you are not familiar with WSRP it may be helpful to review some of the helpful links at the end of this article. This will ensure that you are familiar with the main WSRP concepts and how they work in WebLogic Portal 8.1 SP3.

What is available?

BEA has provided sample remote portlets on a public test server in order to help developers become more familiar with WSRP.

Currently, we have five hosted portlets that are accessible via WSRP. These portlets are:

BEA: WSRP
BEA: Racing!
BEA: Double Byte
BEA: SOA - eWorld 2004
BEA: Download WebLogic Portal 8.1

The main URLs you will need are:

1. WebLogic Portal 8.1 SP3 test server: http://wsrp.bea.com
2. Sample WSRP portal with WSRP portlets: http://wsrp.bea.com/portal/wsrp.portal
3. WSDL Address: http://wsrp.bea.com/portal/producer?wsdl

To enable a remote portlet in your WebLogic Portal project, you can use either Workshop or Portal Administration tools. From Workshop, you can use the portlet wizard to create a proxy portlet that references a remote portlets. From the Administration Portal, you can add a Producer in order to create a proxy portlet.

Using the WSRP Test Server from Workshop

For this example we are using the Workshop with a Portal Application in a Portal domain. (You can use other configurations - see “Working with Producers”). To create a proxy portlet:

1. Right click a Portal project and select "New" -> “Portlet”.
2. From the  Portlet Wizard, select the “Remote Portlet” option
3. Paste the following test server WSDL in the Remote Server field: http://wsrp.bea.com/portal/producer?wsdl.
4. Follow the Wizard to register the Producer.
5. Select a portlet to federate into your application, e.g. “BEA: eWorld 2004”.
6. When finished, you should get a .portlet file.
7. Add the portlet to your portal by dragging-and-dropping it to the desired location (book, page, etc.).
8. Run your portal to see the remote portlet.

Using the WSRP Test Server from the Administration Portal

Before you can access the Administration Portal, your WebLogic Portal server must be running. You should be running WebLogic Portal 8.1 SP3 or later.

Using the Administration Portal, follow the instructions below to create a proxy portlet: