Reverting to the old nested-tables design

Alex Herisanu asked on the JASIG-PORTAL list:

Some time ago there was a discussion thread on how to revert to the old nested-tables layout design. For some reason, nobody seemed to find an answer.

I come back with the same question again: how do i revert to the old java skin?

I tried editing the UP_USER_PROFILE table but with no effect. Why is it AL_TabColumn better than the old tab-column?

Lynn Hollerman helpfully answered:

The main difference between the two is that the AL allows for the insertion of a channel into existing layouts, without the user doing it manually. For example, let's say in the fall semester users create accounts in your portal, which has channels a, b, and c. In the spring semester, there's a channel, d, that is created by your developers, and it's essential that everyone get this channel. With AL, you could push that channel into all layouts; with the previous layout manager, unless you had written some kind of program to go thru all existing layouts and add the channel to them, the only layouts that would get "d" were those that were created after d was added to the database, or the layout they're based on. At least, this is MY concept of the difference. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

How to change from AL back the the previous layout, with nested-tables being used, was discussed on this list, around 2/3/04. The archives would have a more detailed mention of what to do, but here's my summary:

1) In portal.properties, set

org.jasig.portal.UserLayoutStoreFactory 
   = org.jasig.portal.RDBMUserLayoutStore

(was AggregatedUserLayoutStore)

and

org.jasig.portal.layout.UserLayoutManagerFactory.coreImplementation 
   = org.jasig.portal.layout.SimpleUserLayoutManager

2) Run in SQL:

update UP_USER_PROFILE set STRUCTURE_SS_ID=1, THEME_SS_ID=1 where
STRUCTURE_SS_ID=3 and THEME_SS_ID=3;