Chapter 1 Introduce
1.1 Why do we need portal
As Internet dev, business required to integrate various sites into one to supply more comfortable service. However, this generated a smorgasbord look and feel. Security soon became an issue and each site then required authentication, which mean user would endure the frustrating experiencing of logins on a single site with difference name and password. And now many different devices with different attributes such as desktops, mobile phones, and palm pilots are needed to access into business sys.
Portals help today's business address the Internet challenges. It helps programmers focus on developing the business functionality by letting the portal manage the look and feel, personalization, content management, and security. It allows users to integrate different applications from disparate locations and enables them to seamlessly exchange information. Each user can create a personalized device-independent "desktop" with a consistent look and feel by suing drag and drop components.
1.2 IBM WebSphere Family
IBM WebSphere is made up of three components: foundation and tools, reach and user experience or business portals, and business integration.
1.3 What is WebSphere Portal?
1.3.1 The User Experience
Each user can create his or her own portal pages and customize the content and look and feel of these pages. They can add functionality to their pages through portlets, which are portal app. Based on their permissions, users can choose for each page or set of pages their own themes, skins, and layout.
Themes: define the fonts, colors, spacing, and other look-and-feel components of the page.
Skins: comprise title bars, borders, shadows, etc. that surround the portlets.
1.3.1.1 Content Management
WP provides the user the ability to syndicate content or to get up-to-date personalized and filtered content and services from multiple subscriber source such as Financial Times and others. Also support RSS format. IBM Lotus Workpalce Web Content Management (ILWWCM) provides Web Content Management system. ILWWCM is designed for organizations with user that publish content to a web site, whether it is marketing updating product information or human resources updating information on benefits. Content can be published through templates or forms and consists of images, word doc, excel, html and so forth.
1.3.1.2 Document management
WebSphere Portal Document Manager (PDM) provides user the ability to view, add, edit, and delete documents within a common folder hierarchy that can be user-defined. Documents can be made available immediately or to go through an approval process using a defined workflow model.
1.3.1.3 Search
Use of the search capabilities is made through the search portlet, the WP crawler, or the document indexer. Enhanced search is also provided through IBM Lotus Extended Search and DV2 Information Integrator.
1.3.1.4 Collaboration
WebSphere Portal provides complete support for collaboration through the Notes, Domino, and Domino Web Access portlets. These portlets provide access to collaboration app that use Lotus Notes databases on Domino servers such as Mail, Calendar, To Do, Notes View, TeamRoom, and Discussion. Additional portlets are available that integrate Domino.doc, Discovery Server, QuickPlace, and Sametime.
WP offers Collaboration Center, which is a framework that integrates People Finder, the Web Conference Center, QuickPlace, and Sametime.
1.3.1.5 Personalization
- Creating a user profile by collecting user information and classifying it into segments;
- Creating models for the content that defines it by its attributes. For instance, a content model might contain product name, price, and age segment;
- Matching the user segment to the content on the basis of any combination of filtering, rules, or recommendation engine.
The personalization rules are referenced in the portlets. They are created using web-based tools. Another method provided to match site visitors with content is through the recommendation engine. The recommendation engine uses statistical techniques to identify groups of users with similar interests. WebSphere Portal also provides campaign management tools, which enable a business goal to be reached by defining and executing a set of business rules.
1.3.1.6 Performance
WebSphere Portal creates logs that feed into the IBM Tivoli Web Site Analyzer. The Web Site analyzer will analyze the data and report metric in both graphic and text formats so that you can determine the effectiveness of you web site and focus on areas to improve it.
1.3.2 The Developer Experience
1.3.2.1 Portlets communication
- Sending information through a portlet action and a portlet message. (Simply speaking, one portlet create a portlet action and encode it into the URL that is used for displaying another portlet. Upon clicking the URL, an action listener is called and then a portlet message is sent to another portlet with the needed parameters)
- WP provides cooperative portlets, which can be "Click-2-Action" or "wired", to pass messages independently. Portlet express their desire to interact with a broker who at runtime matches data types between the source of one portlet with the action of another portlet. If a match occurs with a "Click-2-Action portlet", a pop-up menu appears on the page that will enable the user to transfer the data to the connected portlet. If the portlet is wired by an administrator, then the data will be exchanged automatically as opposed to having to wait for the user to click the pop-up menu.
1.3.2.2 Through the portlet API, WebSphere Portal provides programmers the ability to
dynamically discover available services.
1.3.2.3 WP server supports the JAAS architecture
1.3.2.4 WP provides developers with support for Web Service for Remote Portlets
(WSRP)
1.3.2.5 WebSphere Portal Application Integrator (WPAI) support ability to access
Enterprise Application Systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel
1.3.2.2 The Administrator Experience
WebSphere Portal enables an administrator to have complete dynamic control over user access right for every portal resource including portlets, pages, and user groups. The permission are defined by the user role. WP has defined roles (Administrator, Security Administrator, Delegator, Manager, Editor, Privileged User, and User).
If a role is assigned to a page, group, or folder, then resource below the parent inherit the permissions unless they are specifically blocked. A user can also delegate his or her role to other users.
WebSphere Portal Member Services provides administration services through portlets for creating, updating, and deleting portal user and for managing their access rights. These services are provided at both the user and group levels. Users can be members of one or more groups and groups can be members of other groups.
User profile information can be supported in an LDAP and/or a database.
WebSphere Portal support form-based authentication (HTML user prompted form) through WAS or a third-party authentication server such as Tivoli Access Manager or Netegrity Siteminder.
1.3.3 WebSphere Portal Architecture
