uPortal

1
uPortal

• System Architecture

2
System Requirements

• Microsoft Windows
• Solaris
• Linux
• Mac OS X

3
Software Requirements

• Sun JDK 1.3 or above
• Ant 1.5.3 or above (Java build tool)
• Servlet Container/Engine compatible with Servlet
  2.2 and JSP 1.1 API (Tomcat 3.3.2)
• JDBC Compliant Database (Hypersonic SQL)

4
Browser Compatibility

• Netscape 4 and above
• Internet Explorer 4 and above
• Mozilla 5 and above

5
J2EE

• The portal architecture can take advantage of the
  J2EE services provided by the Web Container.
• Can use JMS, JTA as available
• Can handle Applets, Servlets, JSP pages

6
Channel Types

• Custom
• Applet
• Image
• Inline Frame
• Portlet
• RSS
• Web Proxy
• WSRP Consumer
• XML Transformation

7
Custom Channel Creation

• Custom channels are written in Java
  CHelloWorld.java
• CHelloWorld.ssl (stylesheet)
• normal_explorer.xsl
• normal_netscape.xsl
• about.xsl (optional)

8
Portlet

• Packaged channel
• Requires compiled java class(es)
• Portlet library (lib/portlet-api-1.0.1.jar)
• Web descriptor (portlet.xml)
• When finished, package into a JAR file, then
  rename to .war

9
Pushed Fragments

• A channel forced on a group of users
• Fragment owner has access to modify settings of a
  fragment

10
Lessons Learned

• uPortal documentation refers to old versions,
  and/or is incomplete
• PATH to the JDK is important
• JAVA_HOME is important to set!
• CLASSPATH is also necessary when using the JDBC
  database connector JAR
• Copy and modify ant.bat (or ant.sh) for uportal
  folder
• Use ant deploy in uportal folder to recompile
  java for your JDK!

11
MySQL caveat

• Documentation refers to older version of MySQL
  and JDBC connector
• Current version (MySQL 4.1.11 and
  MySQL-JDBC-Connector 3.1.8) uses different naming
  schemes when you modify dbloader.xml, names and
  versions must be exact! (see JdbcExample1.java)