Portals and Content Management

Here are my notes developed during my Regis MSCIT class on portals, personalization, content management, and shared workspaces.

(Java Specification Request) JSR 168: Portlet API Specification (final on Oct. 27 2003) enable interoperability between Portlets and Portals by standardizing aggregation, personalization, presentation and security. jsr168.org

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) communication protocol.

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Summary

The dictionary defines the noun portal (por-tal) as “A doorway, an entrance, or a gate, espeically one that is large and imposing.” A portal web site acts as hub, gateway, or entrance through which one can obtain information and services. Well-known web portals include Yahoo, Netscape, MSN, etc.

On user (Internet browser) clients (using default port 80 on Windows NT). Oracle automatically reformats pages for presentation by Wireless clients.

myOracle.com was built using Oracle Portal.

Screencast of IBM Websphere/Lotus Notes Portal

Sample uses:

University of Surrey

Problems and Solutions

Portals help users handle information glut:

Problem with Information	Solution: a Portal provides...
Can't access	single-sign-on to a confederation of services
Can't find	Install a customized version of Internet Explorer (with the corporate logo at the upper right corner). Keyword search through data aggregated from several sources.
Disorganized	common menus and hierarchies to classify data
Outdated	version control and adapters to exchange info from other platforms & systems
Irrelevant (Static=Stupid)	personalization of content to each specific user. portlets developed by PDK present dynamic data
Desk bound	auto repurpose to mobile page formats
Can't share	content management features provide a shared workspace for content contributors to populate the work of portal managers, portlet developers, and page designers
Difficult to contribute	self-service publishing wizards
Can't control	check-in/check-out and approval routing through delegation of role-based access

Groove.net's teamspaces include voice and group whiteboards offered by instant messaging vendors.

Wiley wisely points out that role of managers have changed to from monitoring transactions to that of a strategic analyst of patterns in data captured while work is performed.

Unlike ERP and corporate systems, portal project typically do not have a massive "go live" date but on-going support and continuous improvement -- as discreet systems are unified into a single common workplace.

Content must be reviewed for usefulness, readability, accuracy, and its legal implications

"Populist" applications used by all workers, such as Email, Calendar, Employee Self-Service such as Travel.

"Process Management" applications used by a small number of workers, such as Procurement, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Knowledge and Collaboration Management.

Navigational elements include buttons, links, and tabs. Tabs are frequently used to break up a task into groups of related steps.

The Oracle WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) interface allows file content to be saved or loaded directly from desktop applications like Windows Explorer, Microsoft Office, many HTML editors, and other applications.

myOracle.com was built using Oracle Portal.

"Getting Started" Tutorial

Oracle Portal Quick Tour of the design environment.

Oracle 9iAS Portal Documentation

Categories

Categories classify each type of content:
• News (Organizational changes, Meeting Minutes)
• Phone book and Organization Chart
• Policies and Procedures (Mission, Vision, etc.)
• Financial Budgets, Variance, Production Metrics, Annual Reports
• Product descriptions
• Advertisements and Press Releases to the press and the public
• HR (benefits, job listings)
• Training

Page Groups

Release 2 of Oracle Portal have these default page groups:
• Corporate Pages for corporate home pages
• Portal Design-Time Pages to be used in Portal's design-time environment (e.g., default search pages)
• Documentation for the Portal online help
• Portlet Repository for pages that list all the portlet providers and associated portlets available in an installation
• User Approval Page Group for creating an approval process for self-registered user accounts (this page group displays only if self-registration with approval required is enabled)
• Shared Objects for page group objects that may be used in any page group, including categories and perspectives (Shared Objects containing users' personal pages)

Role Perspectives

Offer different pre-set customizations for each type of worker. Executives, Managers, and computer people each have different interests. If topics offered by the portal home page is primarily for executive sponsors, it will fall into disuse by others.

Perspectives describe the type of person who might be interested in the content. For example, managers, supervisors, and non-exempt employees. Perspective are displayed in a content area.

Offer different pre-set customizations for each type of worker. Executives, Managers, and computer people each have different interests. If topics offered by the portal home page is primarily for executive sponsors, it will fall into disuse by others.

Examples: mySAP Workplace $21 Corporate Portals : Revolutionizing Information Access to Increase Productivity and Drive the Bottom Line by Heidi Collins. New York: AMACOM Books, 2001

$35 The E-business Workplace : Discovering the Power of Enterprise Portals by Thomas Anton. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (US), 2001

$50 Building Corporate Portals Using XML by Finkelstein, Clive.; Aiken, Peter. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2000

Comparisons vs. Competitors

• Apache Software Foundation JetSpeed Portlet API
• BEA: Web Logic Portal 4.0
• IBM: WebSphere Portal 2.1
• Sun iPlanet: iPlanet Portal Server 3.0 [ sample code ]
• Oracle: Oracle 9i
  The 9iAS Standard Edition Perpetual license lists for $10,000 USD, plus $200 USD per named user.
  The 9iAS Enterprise Edition lists for $20,000 USD plus $400 per named user. It offers a self-service Enterprise Information Portal, web caching, multi-tier cluster support, business intelligence (ad-hoc query and analysis, enterprise reporting, and personalized recommendations), single-sign-on integration, LDAP v3.0 and XML-based tools.

• SAP Portal
• LifeRay portal is open-source (MIT license) built using the Java Struts/Axis/Spring/Hibernate (SASH) stack [forum]
• Vignette portal was among the first.
• Epicentric portal

$25 Corporate Portals and eBusiness Integration by Mark M. Davydov. McGraw-Hill, May, 2001

Capabilities

• Personalization (like myYahoo)
• Security -
• Intergration - single-signon for a single environment for J2EE, database.
• Scalability - clustering,
• Extensibility - the 9iAS Portal framework services provides extensible interfaces to various data sources and protocols such as wireless.
• portal functionality build dynamically generates web application code from database tables.
• portal Content Management functionality administers those databases.
• Manageability - portal monitoring functionality provides metrics of performance and alerts need for administration action.

$28 Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach by Russell Nakano. New York: Addison-Wesley Pub Co; September 25, 2001

Other Resources

• Tata Consultancy Services in India has developed assets such as design and unit-testing frameworks, reusable component libraries, and prototypes using them.

  Oracle certified Advantage Partners