Integrating Other Web Applications With the Portal

The SAS Web Infrastructure Kit enables you to easily integrate other applications with the portal Web application. To make a Web application available in the portal Web application, use one of the following approaches:

• Implement a remote portlet and a corresponding Web application. A remote portlet looks like any other portlet, but it calls a remote Web application. The remote Web application returns an HTML fragment to the portal Web application to be displayed within the portlet's borders. This approach is useful when you want to incorporate a portion of the output from your application into the portal Web application.

• Implement a stand-alone application that is invoked from the portal Web application but executed remotely. The stand-alone Web application returns a complete HTML page that is displayed in a separate browser window. This approach is useful when you want to enable users to invoke your application from the portal Web application, but the application output needs to appear separately.

Using SAS Foundation Services to Integrate Applications and Enable Single Signon

Whether your application is called by a remote portlet or is invoked on a stand-alone basis, the SAS Web Infrastructure Kit provides tools to facilitate secure information sharing between the portal Web application and the remote application. One type of information sharing is the single signon feature, which enables other applications to be invoked from the portal Web application without requiring the user to re-enter a user name and password. Other information related to a portal Web application session can be shared as well.

To incorporate the single signon feature or other information sharing into a remote portlet application or a stand-alone Web application, do the following:

• Use classes from SAS Foundation Services in your Web application. SAS Foundation Services is a set of infrastructure and extension services that support the development of integrated, scalable, and secure Java-based applications. For convenient access to the most common access patterns, you will probably want to use the foundation services facade classes, which are part of the Portlet API. For more information, see Using SAS Foundation Services with the Portal.

• Use these classes to access SAS Foundation Services that have been deployed remotely. The SAS Services application (SASServices), which is provided with the SAS Web Infrastructure Kit, provides the remote service deployment. This application, which can be installed anywhere on your network, provides a secure mechanism for the portal Web application to share information with remote Web applications.

For more information about developing Web applications that are enabled by SAS Foundation Services, see the following:

• Sample Web Application (HelloUserWikExample)
• Using SAS Foundation Services with the Portal

For more information about SAS Foundation Services, see SAS Foundation Services in the SAS Integration Technologies: Developer's Guide.

Making Web Applications Available in the Portal Web Application

If your application is to be called by a remote portlet, you must create a portlet deployment descriptor for the portlet and package it in a portal archive (PAR) file. When you deploy the portlet, its metadata is registered automatically with the portal Web application. For more information, see the following:

• Creating a Remote Portlet
• Sample Remote Portlet (HelloUserRemotePortlet)
• Adding Custom-Developed Portlets in the "Adding Content to the Portal" chapter in the SAS Intelligence Platform: Web Application Administration Guide.

If you want to add a stand-alone application to the portal Web application, then you must use a SAS program to register the application's metadata. For instructions, see Adding Web Applications in the "Adding Content to the Portal" chapter in the SAS Intelligence Platform: Web Application Administration Guide.