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• Originally made by University of Michigan and Indiana University to replicate and extend their Course Management System (CMS).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->Portal 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/presentations/JASIG_Sakai_UpdateFinalOnly.ppt#43

• OASIS: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsrp• WebSphere (IBM): http://www-306.ibm.com/software/genservers/portal/

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Questions~

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