First Steps into Oracle WebCenter 11g: Part 1

I've worked on Plumtree portal (aka Oracle WebCenter Interaction, WCI) installations in both .NET and Java environments for the better part of my career.  My current employer selected the portal bundle five short years ago and two vendor take-overs later it appears as though the time to migrate to another portal is on the horizon.  While WCI still has seven years on Oracle's continue and converge track the main issue is that the Publisher web content management package doesn't work (at all) on the IE9 beta, and doesn't work on Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc.  Replacing just the content management package is an option, as is staying on IE8 for the next 6 years (laugh), but what better time to start afresh with an evaluation of new portal systems!

Even though I've seen WebCenter (mostly Spaces) in action at the past 2 OpenWorld conferences, and through a few webinars, the normally text heavy presentations haven't given me much of a sense of how the product looks or works.  WCI was built to empower non-technical business user's to do build communities, pages, portlets and content through a simple GUI interface.  WebLogic portal (from my experience installing and prototyping it) requires much more technical skill and developer interaction.
Why do I mention WebLogic portal? because that is the basis on which WebCenter framework was built.
To find out what changes WebCenter has implemented over WebLogic the best approach is to get the system up and running and kick the tires for yourself!

To that end I've recently been reading all of the material I can find on WebCenter 11g.
Navigating between the Fusion Middleware and WebCenter content to find basic information such as hardware and compatibility requirements has been a bit more tedious than I had expected.  Just as my frustration level peaked there was a part in the clouds and things have begun to come together.

In a few days I'll be in possession of a pair of VM's and hopefully will be able to get WebCenter on it's feet soon after.

Based on our existing infrastructure and the documentation I've gone through, I'll be using a pair of VM's from a Citrix XenApp server (Xeon x5670 processor, with 6 cores and 2 threads per core - 12 total) running XenServer virtualization (unsupported by Fusion 11gR1).

Both will have 100gb of hard disk, 4-6gb of RAM, and will be running Windows Server 2008 x64
VM1 will be used to host the web and middle tier components
VM2 will host SQL 2008 Standard Edition and the version of UCM that comes with WebCenter Suite

Keep your finger's crossed for me, and stay tuned for part 2 of this series when I'll be posting my experiences with the installation.


Here are links to the most helpful resources I've found:

• Getting Started with Oracle WebCenter 11g
  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/webcenter.1111/e10147/index.htm
• Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR1 (11.1.1) System Requirements & Specifications
  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-requirements-100147.html#BABCJAJC
• Supported Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle Fusion Middleware
  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/oracleas-supported-virtualization-089265.html 
• Oracle Fusion Middleware Documentation Library
  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/overview.htm
• Oracle WebCenter Documentation Library
  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/webcenter.htm
• Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide to Oracle WebCenter 11gR1 (11.1.1)
  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/webcenter.1111/e12405/toc.htm
• Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle WebCenter 11gR1 (11.1.1)
  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/install.1111/e12001/toc.htm
• Oracle's Optimized Solution for WebCenter 11g (white paper)
  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/systems-hardware-architecture/oo-soln-webcenter-11g-170243.pdf
• Peter Moskovits's Oracle WebCenter Blog
  http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/
• Oracle Technology Network: WebCenter Suite - Services
  http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=733
• Oracle Technology Network: WebCenter Spaces
  http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=1188