So I was hoping this post would be a glorious review of my first attempt at working with WebParts and Oracle. Alas, the experience has not been so glorious.
I am working on a "dashboard" of sorts as a demo for my boss. I spent a few hours on it this afternoon as a spike to see if the approach is feasible. I have to say that I believe it is, but there is one major kink I have to work out.
ASP.Net WebParts uses the SqlPersonalizationProvider by default. Unfortunately, we are developing on Oracle. However, Oracle has provided a kit of providers including Membership, Role, and Personalization (among others). It was a simple matter of running a few database scripts, including the library in web application, and configuring to use the Oracle providers.
All seemed well. The WebPartManager recognized the authenticated user's rights appropriately. At run-time, I could put my test page in "Design" mode and move the various parts around.
The glitch is that the changes are not persisting. From one postback to the next, any of the previous changes are getting lost. For some reason, the personalization isn't getting persisted. I spent a couple of hours with the MSDN docs and Google, but couldn't find a solution.
As it is very late, I am hoping that I'm just doing something stupid (or stupidly not doing something) and when I wake up in the morning, I will fall upon the answer.
Hopefully, I will post a follow-up very soon with the resolution.