Configuration
For on-premises customers, the multiplexed data source is configured along with other data sources in the Farm Manager. See the portal installation guide to get complete data source configuration steps. For cloud customers, this data source is configured in the Portal Manager.
The configuration consists of a list of underlying data sources that will be multiplexed together. Additionally, an alias may be assigned to each data source. This can be used by the scripting as an alternate name for the data source in the context of the group.
Each data source mentioned in the multiplexed data source must have already been created and configured, defining how to connect to it. Data source names must be unique across the portal, however aliases only need to be unique within their multiplexed group.
Aliases
There are many places in a portal application where it may be necessary to specify a data source name. For example, some FDFs allow a data source to be explicitly referenced to support their functionality. Also, collection definitions associate collection names with explicit data source names.
Content such as FDFs and collection definitions are created prior to installation, so it is impossible to know what data sources they will be used with at runtime. Yet, they need to reference the appropriate data sources to support their function.
To resolve this problem, aliases provide a way for set data source names to be used in the content and pointed to the appropriate data sources when the portal is configured.
Generally, aliases are used in these two places in the portal:
- As an alternate name for a data source. For example,
you could have a multiplexed data source named North American Region that has
been configured at installation time. However, during portal content
development, it was not known what that data source was going to be named, so a
generic AllSites name was used in the collection definitions.
By creating the alias named AllSites and pointing it to the North American Region data source, the web pages will be able to find their way to the correct data to display.
- As an alternate name for a data source within a
multiplexed data source. Sometimes it is necessary to reference a particular
entry in a multiplexed data source at runtime. The main case is during creation
of new records as discussed later in this document. New records must be
associated with a data source for them to be saved.
For example, the back office site name known at runtime can be used to determine where to save the new record. By specifying the site name as an alias within the multiplexed collection, a lookup can be performed to find the actual data source name.
