4 Using Discoverer Portlets in OracleAS Portal

About using OracleAS Portal as a personalization framework for Discoverer

All authenticated/logged in users will be able to customize particular properties of each Discoverer portlet you create. For example, they will be able to change the portlet title and other portlet options and set formatting customizations for a Discoverer Worksheet portlet. You may also allow them to customize additional properties of the portlet such as the database connection used, parameter values, or the list of worksheets.

You can also allow users to analyze the worksheet that is used as the basis for a Discoverer Worksheet or Gauges portlet in the Single Worksheet Viewer. The Single Worksheet Viewer is a special instance of the Discoverer Viewer that is available only through a Discoverer portlet. When a user opens a worksheet from a Discoverer List of Worksheets portlet they also use the Single Worksheet Viewer. The Single Worksheet Viewer will not allow users to change the worksheet they have opened and will not allow them to change the connection used. It is specifically designed to restrict the user to access to one worksheet from a Discoverer portlet.

Note that when an authenticated user launches the Single Worksheet Viewer (whether from an Analyze link in a Worksheet or Gauges portlet or opening a worksheet from a Discoverer List of Worksheets portlet) the SSO username is passed through to the query being executed to return data to Single Worksheet Viewer. In this way, if data differs by Single Sign-On user, the user will only see the data they are supposed to see.

Once in Single Worksheet Viewer, the user will have access to additional customizations and actions that are not available within the portlet customizations page. For example, in the Single Worksheet Viewer the user will be able to change layout by moving or swapping columns and change page item values to change the data displayed. In addition to extended customizations, Single Worksheet Viewer gives the user access to the following actions that are not available directly in the portlet:

• Rerun query

• Revert to original

• Print

• Export

• Send as email

The following table summarizes customizations and specifies whether they are available through the portlet customization page or through the Single Worksheet Viewer.

Note: Rows and Columns are a separate setting in the portlet and in Single Worksheet Viewer, which do not affect each other.

You can further allow Discoverer users to save these customizations made in Single Worksheet Viewer for the Worksheet and List of Worksheets Discoverer portlets. By doing this you can create a personalization framework and effectively support hundreds of users with a handful of worksheets. You can allow each OracleAS Portal/SSO user to have their own personalized, custom view of the worksheets they are interested in without the overhead of creating and managing a database account for them or granting them privileges to create and save Discoverer workbooks to the database.

In all cases, whether modified in the customize portlet page or in the Single Worksheet Viewer, all customizations are stored on a per user, per portlet basis and are only viewable to that OracleAS Portal user. The customizations will not impact or be visible to other users.