Jim Farmer

1
Jim Farmer China Education and Research
Conference 2002 Beijing, China March 28, 2002
2
Portals
3
A students Web World
Research
Library
Administrative
Instruction
4
Portal defined

• Portal - an entry point or starting site for the
  World-Wide Web, combining a mixture of content
  and services and attempting to provide a
  personalized "home base" for its audience with
  features like customizable pages and personal
  homepage construction kits.
• Auburn University www.Auburn.edu/helpdesk/glossary
  /,
• March 24, 2002

5
With channels (portlets)
Channel B
Channel A
uPortal Framework
Channel C
Channel D
uPortal database
6
Students expectations shaped by...

• Their use of the Internet
• Their use of government and business portals
• Their life in a real-time, information rich
  environment

7
Why are portals important

• Make knowledge workers more productive
• Meet user preferences
• A viable architecture for information services
• Improved services
• Lower costs

8
A student portal
9
Types of portals

• Enterprise integration
• Knowledge/document management
• Collaboration and messaging
• Front end to application servers
• Jim Rapoza, Enterprise value of portals is
  clear,
• eWeek, September 13, 2001

10
Required capabilities
11
Typical services
12
uPortal
13
What is uPortal?

• Enterprise, horizontal portal
• Framework for presenting aggregated content
  (channels or portlets)
• Personalization
• Role-based access control
• Open source, collaborative effort
• Java web application

14
Where does uPortal fit?
People
Browsing Devices
uPortal with Channels
Data
Applications
15
uPortal interfaces

• Authentication
• Proving your identity
• Authorization
• Deciding what you can access
• Directory services
• Such as populating EduPerson
• User preferences
• Profiles, structure, themes, skins
• Channel information
• Availability and configuration

16
What is a channel?

• Displays content
• XML feeds
• Rich Site Summary (RSS)
• Web services
• Legacy systems
• Interactive applications
• Bookmarks
• Email, chat, list serves

17
The Meteor channel
18
Flexible layouts

• Structures
• Tab / column
• Tree / column
• Themes
• Multi-column
• Multi-row
• Skins
• Matrix, Java

19
User preferences
20
Tab / Column layout
21
Tree / Column layout
22
Content transformation
XML
XSLT Processor
XHTML Web Browser
HTML PDA
Stylesheet
WML Cell Phone
23
Multiple target devices
24
Theme uosm
25
Theme java
26
Theme imm
27
Theme matrix
28
What is new in 2.0?

• Abstraction of layout
• Structure/theme transformations
• Standard channel events
• Standard CSS classes
• More flexible publish/subscribe
• User profile management
• JNDI lookup service
• WebProxy channel

29
What is planned for 2.1?

• Aggregated layouts
• Publishing/channel administration
• Frame support
• Browser differentiation
• Tree/column structure and themes
• Web services extension
• WML theme
• Internationalization

30
What is planned for 2.2?

• Integrated content management
• Workflow services
• Composite group services
• Channel development kit
• User administration tools
• Synchronization of multiple Java Virtual Machines

31
Channel developments

• Composite directory
• Calendaring (Washington)
• Library system integration via Web services
  (Hull)
• Single signon using WebISO (Hawaii)
• Digital certificate support (CREN)
• WSRP Support

32
JA-SIG

• Java In AdministrationSpecial Interest Group
• www.jasig.org
• Conferences biannually
• Clearing house
• https//www.mis4.udel.edu/JasigCH/
• Collaborative projects

33
The End
Jim Farmer Project Administrator JA-SIG
Collaborative www.ja-sig.org jxf_at_immagic.com
34
uPortal FrameworkArchitecture
35
Basic architecture
uPortal Framework
uPortal database
36
Basic architecture
Permissions
iPlanet LDAP
authentication
User preferences
Channel registry
Other uPortal Data
Oracledb2 mySQL
37
With channels
Channel B
Channel A
uPortal Framework
Channel C
Channel D
uPortal database
38
Interface services

• Provider - an application that provides service
  to an interface, and may use the uPortal database
• Connector - a program that provides service from
  a standalone application to an interface. May
  also be called an adaptor

39
Interface options
Connector
Provider
External Application
40
Architectural features

• Extensive user customization
• Inter-channel communications
• Channel services
• Normalized database schema
• Profiles (multiple device management)
• Layout-specific preferences channels
• JNDI backbone

41
Channel services

• Services provide common functionality to the
  channels
• Logging facility
• Password wallet
• File sharing, printing, mail, calendar
• Channel synchronization
• JNDI access

42
Inter-channel communication

• Channel discovery
• How to find a channel ? Need channel instance ID.
• Functional names
• Direct interaction
• Channel access objects
• Channel-bound public JNDI subtrees

43
Basic Architecture
44
Connectors may communicate

• By calls to the application
• By custom protocols over, say, sockets
• By standards protocols such as LDAP
• By business messages using Web services - XML,
  SOAP, UDDI

45
uPortal interfaces

• Permissions - permission management
• Security Context - authentication, single signon
• User preferences - layout, style sheet choices
• Channel registry - channel specific persistent
  store

46
IChannel content must

• Be well-formed XML such as XHTML, RSS, SVG, SMIL,
  or SOAP message (but not HTML)
• Rendered by an XSL transformation using an XSL
  stylesheet

47
A channel may be extended

• To support an application using custom code
• Or a different form of content rendered using
  custom code
• Through the IChannel interface

48
Web services Architecture
49
A Web service is

• XML business messages
• using ebXML/SOAP compliant data transport
• rendered using XSL transformations
• for a remotely authenticated user

50
Web services architecture is

• XML tagged data content
• eXtensible Markup Language
• ebXML/SOAP data transport
• Simple Object Access Protocol
• XSL transformations for presentation
• eXtensible stylesheet language
• and now
• UDDI/WSDL directory services
• Universal Description, Discovery, and
  Integration, and Web Services Description Language

51
Is Web technology important?

• Feb 1993 - The University of Illinois releases
  the Mosaic browser
• Oct 1995 - The word e-commerce enters the
  vocabulary
• Feb 2000 - ED/SFA announces UML, XML, Java
  standards
• Sep 2000 - IBM announces Web services, a new
  architecture

52
Value of Web Services technology

• Open standards Web service projects are taking
  one-fourth the time and costing one-fifth
  comparable projects using traditional technology.
  Performance is 2 to 10 times better than
  expected.
• HFC Bank - IFX credit card application using XML,
  SOAP and XSLT
• Deutsche Bank Bauspar - FixML security
  transaction integration using XML messages and
  XSL transformations
• Hypo Vereinsbank - Integration
• Based on presentations at the XSLT
  Invitational Conference Oxford, University,
  April 8-9, 2001

53
Standards-based Development
54
Standards-based channels

• Design using current Web standards
• Internet Engineering Task Force
• W3C World Wide Web Consortium
• IMS Global Learning, Inc.
• ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) Labs
• Extend current applications to meet academic
  needs
• Hierarchical permissions
• Secure anonymous authentication
• Integrate with uPortal

55
Requested standards-based channels

• Authentication/Authorization
• SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)
• Secure Logging
• Syslog (IETF Syslog)
• Log4j (Apache Foundation log4j)

56
Requested standards-based channels

• Directory
• eduPerson (Educause person object)
• IMS (IMS Enterprise Specification)
• DSML (Directory Service Markup Language)
• LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
• Workflow
• WfML (Work Flow Markup Language)
• WSFL (Web Services Flow Language)

57
Requested standards-based channels

• Internet chat
• IMPP (IETF Internet Messaging and Presence
  Protocol)
• Jabber (Jabber Foundation Jabber Protocol)
• Distributed authoring
• WebDAV (IETF Web Distributed Authoring and
  Versioning)
• Extending a current uPortal channel authored by
  the University of British Columbia
• E-mail
• POP3 (IETF Post Office Protocol)
• IMAP4 (Internet Mail Access Protocol)
• SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol)

58
Requested standards-based channels

• Electronic books
• Open eBook
• Electronic publications
• DocBook
• Customer Relationship Management
• Customer Profile Exchange
• In conjunction with the Open Knowledge
  Initiative
• instruction delivery
• IMS (Instructional Management Systems)
• SCORM (ADLs Shareable Content Object Reference
  Model)
• testing
• IMS, SCORM