Questions on Java Portal Framework

Question

I have some basic questions with regards to portal framework - sorry if these are to be split up into multiple questions and posted individually.

I read in one of the answers in this forum that "portal" doesn't follow a standard specification for aggregating and displaying content and that each portal has its own way of displaying information.

What constitutes a portal framework? Is portal framework necessary for running portlets or is a portlet container suffice? I guess apache pluto server is a portlet container but not a full fledged portal - am I right? Is there a strong relationship between portal server and content management systems - how are they related? Does a industry standard portal provide out of the box capability for performing authentication and authorisation? If it is so - what are the other features that an industry standard portal framework must possess? What are the popular portal frameworks? Are there any widely used portal frameworks?Thanks!

Answer 1

A portal represents a web site that provides a single point of access to applications and information. Portal framework is the portion of a portal that is responsible for the rendering and customization of the portal. Portal framework implementation requires implementing set of JSRs for example JSR168 and JSR268 (portlet spec v1 and v2).

In order to run portlets you need application server that implements portlet container spec (JSR168 or JSR286). It can be one of the big enterprise products :IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic (both have application servers, express application servers and portals) or some open source portlet containers: JBoss, Pluto, OpenPortal , Liferay etc.

Security (authentication-authorization) addressed in portlet JSRs. However, portlets are mostly secured with 3rd partiy frameworks (I did it with Spring)

Regarding what is popular, I guess that the good answer would be "it depends"... If you work for big enterprise company - I would recommend IBM WebSphere 7 Portal, otherwise I recommend you to consider JBoss and Liferay.

Good Luck!

Answer 2

A "portal" is a website that aggregates content and services from other websites. Usually when someone wants to build a portal, it is to solve a problem of finding and using information (they have too much and its all spread out).

Portal frameworks let you build complex websites that reuse existing content and applications. Examples and popular platforms include: Drupal (an open source php platform), Sharepoint (Microsoft's .Net Portal platform), and IBM WebSphere Portal (based on Java).

The reuse part is key to a portal - In Drupal you can install modules from the community to quickly (faster than from scratch) replicate the functionality you see elsewhere on the web such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums, user profiles, shopping carts, and database application. In Sharepoint you can do the same thing with "Webparts". In IBM Portal they are called "Portlets".

The portal platform itself handles the user authentification (login / log out), security (groups and access to resources), and depending on the portal, the search, content management, navigation, language management, device detection (mobile or desktop to direct to correct display templates) and provide a way to extend the portal with plugins, portlets, widgets, webparts or whatever they call them in the portal you select.

Most Web Content Management solutions can be used alone or in a portal to handle content creation, version control, tagging, security, and formatting.