A provider group is a mechanism for organizing and simplifying the registration of providers. Provider groups often define a group of providers that share a common feature, such as belonging to the same organization, or providing similar content or function.
A portal administrators can register a provider group for use with his or her portal. Once registered, all the provider group's providers are listed under it in the Navigator. The portal administrator then simply clicks the Register link next to each provider that he or she wants to register with the portal. Once they have been registered, providers are used in the same way as manually registered providers and are independent of the provider group that was used during their registration.
A provider group only contains Web providers or database providers that are accessed via the Federated Portal Adapter.
What is a provider?
Registering a provider group
Registering a provider