Overview of Web Portals

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Overview of Web Portals

• Jason Cook

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What is a Portal?

• A web site that provides specialized capabilities
  for visitors.
• Designed to use distributed applications,
  different amounts of middleware and hardware to
  provide services from a number of different
  sources.

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Portals Available

• uPortal
• Sakai
• WebSphere
• WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets)

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uPortal

• Free, shareable
• Uses Java, XML, JSP and J2EE
• Built by a collaborative effort of JA-SIG (Java
  in Administration Special Interest Group)
• Made very easy to get up and running with a
  single download, but recommended that real
  production users use the source release

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uPortal

• Relatively easy to get started but need Tomcat,
  J2EE and Ant experience
• Was going to try myself but no Ant on Redcloud
  as I wanted to see just how easy this would be to
  setup.

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Sakai

• Aims to create a Collaboration and Learning
  Environment for higher education.
• Originally made by University of Michigan and
  Indiana University to replicate and extend their
  Course Management System (CMS).
• Ideally uses existing services.
• For new production uPortal is a better choice

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Sakai

• As it uses JSR-168 the use of context, access
  control, rich APIs is not possible.
• JSR-168 is rather limited to Portlet-gtPortal
  interaction with no mention of using other APIs,
  which means they have to be hacked in.

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WebSphere (IBM)

• Commercial Product
• Two versions enable and extend
• Has more robust features in analysis and Return
  on Investment (ROI)

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WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets)

• Standardizing presentation-oriented Web services
  for use by aggregating intermediaries, such as
  portals
• OASIS Organization for the Advancement of
  Structured Information Standards
• Lots of companies involved (IBM, Microsoft, etc.)

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Conclusion

• Not many to chose from even commercially
• Replaceable with Web Services or other content
  management systems.
• Largely Academic use.

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References

• uPortal http//www.uportal.org/
• JA-SIG http//www.ja-sig.org/
• Sakai http//sakaiproject.org/
• uPortal vs. Sakai http//www.sakaiproject.org/pre
  sentations/JASIG_Sakai_UpdateFinalOnly.ppt43
• OASIS http//www.oasis-open.org
• /committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrevwsrp
• WebSphere (IBM) http//www-306.ibm.com/
• software/genservers/portal/

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Questions

• ?