Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Elements of Successful uPortal Implementations Implementing uPortal to Guarantee Performance and Reduce Risk Adam Rybicki

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Agenda Introduction Project Planning Risk Management Training Integration Development Best Practices Change Control Capacity Planning Production Rollout Our Customers Are Our Partners Questions?

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Introduction IBS was a founding member of JA-SIG IBS helped develop uPortal IBS developed many uPortal channels IBS partnered with Sun Microsystems to assure uPortal’s scalability IBS Merged with UNICON in January, 2003 UNICON/IBS provides technical support for uPortal UNICON/IBS has provided assistance with many custom implementations of uPortal UNICON/IBS developed 2 uPortal products: Academus Portal and Academus CMS

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Project Planning Start early Collect requirements Prioritize requirements Determine whether the timeline or features are of higher priority Identify dependencies Identify required skills Obtain the required training Develop an iterative release schedule Analyze existing infrastructure and install the new servers Establish a development environment Implement a change control system Use existing usernames

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Risk Management Secure a budget for: –New staff –Hardware –Software –Consulting –Training Avoid large releases Document requirements and obtain approval Identify problem areas and reassign resources Eliminate dependencies Get more hardware rather than less Write a custom Java channel only if: –A generic uPortal channel (RSS, Web Proxy, Inline Frame, or XML Transformation) cannot handle the job, and –Your staff is qualified

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Budget Example

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Training J2EE is object-oriented—get OO training uPortal is J2EE—get J2EE training XML/XSLT is required uPortal uses LDAP/eduPerson UNICON/IBS uPortal development training (2 levels) Web services for backend integration (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, WSRP)

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Integration Directory (LDAP) integration is essential Use eduPerson –uPortal uses it for person attributes –It has the eduPersonAffiliation (for groups) and eduPersonPrimaryAffiliation (for default layout) attributes Use Web services where possible Monitor the new OpenEAI project

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Development Best Practices Define phases shorter than six-month Allow for incremental iterations within each phase Decentralize development Make code reviews mandatory Designate developer mentors (J2EE best practices) Centralize integration Implement regular (weekly) builds Promote from integration to QA Implement a bug tracking system Development manager, not QA, assigns bug fixes uPortal’s groups are infinitely flexible, but be aware that their administration will create additional cost

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Change Control Developer File ServerCVS ServerIntegration ServerQA ServerProduction Server Bug Database Development Manager

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Capacity Planning Define target audience size Peak number of users of enterprise portals is 8% of the entire user population Use many smaller servers rather than one large Use load balancing software or hardware Allow for SSL encryption Today’s servers can handle concurrent users per CPU

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Sun iForce Center Test Results

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Production Rollout Allow at least 2 weeks for load testing Use load generation software (OpenSTA, JMeter) Perform (and survive!) a stress test Monitor production closely (vmstat, top, Orca, etc.) Use well designed default portal layouts (only 10% of students modify them) Implement a user feedback system

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Our Customers Are Our Partners University of British Columbia Illinois State University Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo Columbia University University of Nottingham University of Virginia Villanova University University of Delaware Arizona State University Iowa State University University of New Mexico Deakin University Rutgers University University of Kansas University of Saskatchewan Abilene Christian University Roanoke College University of Colorado New Teacher Center El Camino College University of California, Merced Western Kentucky University

Pan European Portal Conference 2003, Geneva April 25, 2003 Questions?