Introduction to Promoting Portal Content

Promotion Methods for Portal Content

The promotion of portal content typically requires the extraction, importing, and upgrading of portal content. You can use a holistic approach (promote the entire portal application tree), or you can use an incremental approach (promote specific pieces of portal content). Guidance about when to use each method is included in the topic that provides instructions.
Portal content should always be promoted last, after any related or support content has been brought into the target environment. The most common scenarios for promotion of portal content are as follows:
  • You are upgrading your system from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS 9.2, and you want to move your portal content to the new environment. In this scenario, most content (including the portal content) is moved by the migration tools such as SAS Deployment Wizard and SAS Migration Utility. For more information, see SAS Intelligence Platform: Migration Guide.
  • You are upgrading your system from SAS 9.1.3 to SAS 9.3, and you want to move your portal content to the new environment. In this scenario, most content (including the portal content) is moved by the migration tools such as SAS Deployment Wizard and SAS Migration Utility. For more information, see SAS Intelligence Platform: Migration Guide.
  • You are upgrading your system from SAS 9.2 to SAS 9.3, and you want to move your portal content to the new environment. In this scenario, most content (including the portal content) is moved by the migration tools such as SAS Deployment Wizard and SAS Migration Utility. For more information, see SAS Intelligence Platform: Migration Guide.
  • You are developing and testing portal content on one system before deploying the content to a production system. The portal promotion tools enable you to move portal content from the development system to the production system, without manually regenerating the content. Before you promote portal content, you must promote any related content that is outside the scope of portal promotion. See What Cannot Be Promoted through Portal Promotion.

What Can Be Promoted through Portal Promotion

The following content types are within the scope of portal promotion:

What Cannot Be Promoted through Portal Promotion

Portal content should always be promoted last, after all related and supporting content has been brought into the target environment. Here are some examples of content types that are outside the scope of portal promotion:
WebDAV content
Some portlets such as the WebDAV Content and WebDAV Graph portlets use files stored in the WebDAV. WebDAV files associated with these portlets are not promoted. For information about how to promote WebDAV content that is associated with metadata objects, see “Using the Promotion Tools” in the SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide.
SAS content
SAS content includes many different types of content that can be promoted by using the Export SAS Package and the Import SAS Package wizards:
  • information maps
  • data explorations
  • reports
  • stored processes
  • channels
  • subscribers
  • SAS portlets
  • burst definitions
For more information about how to promote SAS content, see “Using the Promotion Tools” in the SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide. In the November 2010 Release of SAS 9.2 and later, the SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java application and SAS Visual Data Explorer are discontinued. However, when you upgrade or migrate to SAS 9.2 or SAS 9.3, bookmarks in data explorations are converted into SAS reports. This conversion is made possible by the scripts that are used by the migration or upgrade process. During the portal promotion process, the upgradeMetadata scripts convert bookmarks to reports. You can view the SAS report in SAS Web Report Studio 4.3 or later. If there were references to the data explorations (in the form of SBIP URLs), those references would be updated. For more information, see “Performing Post-migration Tasks” in the SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide.
Custom portlets or user-defined PAR files
Content associated with custom portlets and third-party portlets is not promoted. This content should be promoted manually. For information about custom portlets, see Developing Portlets for SAS Information Delivery Portal.
SAS Themes
The import process does not import SAS Themes connection information or the default references. For more information about SAS Web Application Themes, see Administering SAS Web Application Themes in SAS Intelligence Platform: Middle-Tier Administration Guide.
SAS BI Dashboard
The SAS BI Dashboard 4.3 portlet and later uses files stored on the file system and data stored in the SAS metadata server. Neither the files nor the metadata associated with this portlet is promoted. For more information about promoting SAS BI Dashboard portlet, see Promoting SAS BI Dashboard Content.

Versions and Compatibility

In this chapter, we refer to source and target systems for promoting portal content.
A source system is:
  • a SAS 9.1.3 deployment with SAS Information Delivery Portal 2.0
  • a SAS 9.2 deployment with SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2 or SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3
  • a SAS 9.3 deployment with SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31
A target system can be any of the following deployments:
  • a SAS 9.2 deployment with SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2 or SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3
  • a SAS 9.3 deployment with SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31
The portal content in SAS Information Delivery Portal 2.0 can be promoted to the 4.2, 4.3, or 4.31 version of SAS Information Delivery Portal.
The following table shows the SAS releases that are compatible with supported versions of the SAS Information Delivery Portal.
Compatibility
SAS Release
SAS Information Delivery Portal Version
SAS 9.1.3
SAS Information Delivery Portal 2.0
SAS 9.2
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2
SAS 9.2 Maintenance Release 2
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2, Maintenance Release 1
October 2009 Release
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2
SAS 9.2 Maintenance Release 3
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.2, Maintenance Release 2
November 2010 Release
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3
SAS 9.2
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3, Second Maintenance Release
SAS 9.3
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31
SAS 9.3 Maintenance Release 1
SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31

About the Portal Promotion Tools

Here is some general information about the extract, import, upgrade, and remove scripts:
  • You should always back up the entire system before running any of the scripts.
  • Provide the user ID and password for an unrestricted user.
  • For scripts that you run against the SAS 9.2 or SAS 9.3 metadata server, you can use an internal account (for example, sasadm@saspw).
  • The extract script has a SAS 9.1.3, SAS 9.2, and SAS 9.3 version. Use the SAS 9.1.3 version when the source is a SAS 9.1.3 metadata repository. Use the SAS 9.2 version when the source is a SAS 9.2 metadata repository. Use a a SAS 9.3 version when the source is a SAS 9.3 metadata repository.
  • Each script has a .bat form (for Windows) and a .sh form (for UNIX).
  • You can encode the password using PROC PWENCODE.
  • To run the script remotely, use the following additional parameters:
    -server machine-name -port port-number
In addition to the scripts, portal promotion uses a set of metadata extraction templates. There is one .xml file for each content type that can be promoted.
The entire set of promotion tools (scripts, batch files, and extraction templates) is available as follows:
  • If you have SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31, the scripts are in the configuration directory under your equivalent of \Lev1\Web\Applications\SASPortal4.3\PortalPromotion.
  • If you do not have SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.31, obtain the scripts by contacting SAS Technical Support.
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