Web Portal Project

1

Web Portal Project

- -Lee, Austin

-Narayan, Sujeeth-Viswanathan, Arun

CS 526 Class Project

28 – Apr - 2005 Web Portal 2

Agenda

Part 1 – Portals Introduction Part 2 – uPortal Introduction Part 3 – uPortal Architecture Part 4 – Channels Part 5 – Individual Explorations Part 6 - Conclusion


Motivation

Yes!! Portal jobs in market!! Middleware Technologies – Portlets,

WebServices, XML, CSS,… CU-Boulder has implemented. UCCS

too.. Bigger team size, different experiences

and more learning


What is a Portal ?

Portals wrap an organization’s documents and applications in a single

web interface that provides distributed access, cross-platform usability,

personalization, management, and security features.


List of Portal Features

• Categorization of content (taxonomy)

• Content management & aggregation

• Personalization

• Robust application integration

• Development tools

• Mobile/wireless support

• Single Sign-On

• Security


Available Portals

Open Source Portals with Java eXo JetSpeed – Apache WebSphere Portal – IBM uPortal - JASIG

Open Source Portals with Microsoft Technologies DotNetNuke Rainbow

Others PHPNuke, Microsoft Share Point, Oracle Portal, Peoplesoft Portal,..


Portals Survey

Survey by: http://portlets.blogspot.com


Part 2 – uPortal Introduction


What is uPortal ? Developed under JA-SIG (Java in Administration Special

Interest Group) by institutions of higher-education including Princeton, Yale, and University of Delaware

An open source, open standards effort built upon Java, XML, XSL, JSP, J2EE, and JDBC

More of a framework for building custom portals than a proper portal


uPortal extended - SAKAI

Developed by Universities – MIT, Stanford, Indiana and O.K.I

SAKAI = Collaboration & Learning Environment Includes :

• Course Management System

• Research collaboration system

• Tool Portability Profile Tool – standard for future educational application

SEPP – Sakai Education Partners Program


uPortal Sample Screen


Part 3 - uPortal Architecture


Architecture

DB

ExternalWeb

Resources

Web Browser

ApacheJava Servlet

Engine

ServletConnector uPortal

Framework

JavaChannels


System Requirements

Microsoft Windows Solaris Linux Mac OS X


Software Requirements

Sun JDK 1.3 or above Ant 1.5.3 or above (Java build tool) Servlet Container/Engine compatible

with Servlet 2.2 and JSP 1.1 API (Tomcat 3.3.2)

JDBC Compliant Database (Hypersonic SQL)


Browser Compatibility

Netscape 4 and above Internet Explorer 4 and above Mozilla 5 and above


J2EE

The portal architecture can take advantage of the J2EE services provided by the Web Container.

Can use JMS, JTA as available Can handle Applets, Servlets, JSP

pages


Custom Channel Creation

Custom channels are written in Java: CHelloWorld.java

CHelloWorld.ssl (stylesheet) normal_explorer.xsl normal_netscape.xsl about.xsl (optional)


Portlet

Packaged channel Requires compiled java class(es) Portlet library (lib/portlet-api-1.0.1.jar) Web descriptor (portlet.xml) When finished, package into a JAR file,

then rename to .war


Pushed Fragments

A channel forced on a group of users Fragment owner has access to modify

settings of a fragment


Part 4 - Channels


Channel Types

Custom Applet Image Inline Frame Portlet RSS Web Proxy WSRP Consumer XML Transformation


Channels - Demo


Individual Explorations


System Info

OS: Fedora Core 3 (2.6.11 kernel)Processor/Memory: Pentium 4, 256 MBBrowser: Mozilla Firefox v1.0.3uPortal Quick Start v2.4.2JDK v1.4.2 & v1.5.0


Configuration

Download zip fileExtractSet JAVA_HOME, PATH env variablesStart up HSQL server and Tomcat serverOn browser, http://localhost:8080/uPortalLogin as admin, developer, demo,

student, faculty, staff


My Channel

A campus news channel (RSS)• current happenings

• discussion forums

• student comments

Weather channel ( WSRP)Usage-tracking functionality

(implement?!)


PayPal Channel - Demo


MySQL caveat

Documentation refers to older version of MySQL and JDBC connector

Current version (MySQL 4.1.11 and MySQL-JDBC-Connector 3.1.8) uses different naming schemes when you modify dbloader.xml, names and versions must be exact! (see JdbcExample1.java)


Classifieds Channel Goals:

• Enable users to have a separate classifieds channel

• It could be either push-fragment or user subscription

• Classifieds publish time frame

• Customizable by user • Only Titles and Link (View)• Title and Details (View)• Subscribe to interested Categories – Cars , Rental


Classifieds - Roles

Admin Channel Admin

• Content Manager

• Time Frame Manager

Request User• Fill in the content details and time period

General Users

• Subscribe to the channel


Classifieds Channel - Design Built using XML and Portlets

XML Schema used : <Classifieds>

<Classified>

<Title></Title>

<Details></Details>

<Link></Link>

</Classified>

</Classifieds>


Design (Continue)

Portlet JSR -168 Use IPersonal Interface by uPortal for

user Identification


Part 6 - Conclusion


Lessons Learnt uPortal documentation refers to old versions, and/or is

incomplete JDK 1.4 or higher....but JDK 1.5.0?

• RSS Portlet example fails to render with 1.5.0 CLASSPATH is also necessary when using the JDBC database connector JAR Environment variable setting

• Set them once-and-for-all Running uPortal

• First time, start both servers as root user

• Subsequent startup, no need to be root

• Not mentioned in README!! Modify ant.bat (or ant.sh) with fixed path of Ant folder. Use ‘ant deploy’ in uportal folder to recompile java for your JDK!


References

www.uportal.org www.sakaiproject.org www.cuconnect.colorado.edu www.portlets.blogspot.com www.w3c.org http://people.emich.edu/kmanickam/

uportal_2_0_1/channel_2_0_1.htm www.mysql.com


Questions ??

Web Portal Project

Documents

Transcript of Web Portal Project