How is portal data organized

Portal data is broken into four logical groups, each group has differnet users, charateristics and different rates of access and growht.

• Configuration data: This is data that defines the portal server setup such as database connections, object factories and deployment descriptor. This configuration data is usually constant over the uptime of a portal server node and is typically kept in property files on the portal servers hard disk and proptected by file system security. Most of this data is managed by the the WebSphere Application Server.



• Release data: This type of data defines all portal resource definitions, rules and rights. Ex. Portal pages, portlets, page hierarchy, access control rights related information. This type of data is typically not modified during production and need administrative rights to do so.Release data cannot be split or shared and administrator must make sure that the content of the release database is consistent across the different lines.



• Customization: This is typically only associated with a particular user but it is data that can be shared amongst portal server nodes. Example of customization data is private page or preferences of portlets. Since the data in the customization database applies to single user only, the ACL is greatly simplified.
  
  In an environment that consist of multiple lines of production, customization data is kept in a database that is shared across the lines of productions. Therefore the data is automatically in sync. across the lines of productions and no matter which line of production the user logs into, that customizations are still available to theme.



• Community: These are modified during production. This type of data includes items such as shared documents or application resources. Users and groups are allowed to modify or delete data. Community resources are protected by portal access control.
  
  Community data includes items such as Web Content Management (WCM), and the
  aforementioned Portal Document Manager (PDM). In other words, shared data that is not
  part of the release data.