1. Portals, uPortal and JA-SIG
Jim Farmer
China Education and Research Conference 2002
Beijing, China March 28, 2002

2. Portals

3. A student’s Web World
Research
Library
Administrative
Instruction

4. Portal defined
Portal - an entry point or starting site for the World-Wide Web, combining a mixture of content and services and attempting to provide a personalized "home base" for its audience with features like customizable … pages and personal homepage construction kits.
Auburn University
March 24, 2002

5. With channels (portlets)
Channel B
Channel A
uPortal
Framework
Channel C
Channel D
uPortal
database

6. Students expectations shaped by...
Their use of the Internet
Their use of government and business portals
Their life in a “real-time, information rich” environment

7. Why are portals important
Make knowledge workers more productive
Meet user preferences
A viable architecture for information services
Improved services
Lower costs

8. A student portal

9. Types of portals Enterprise [integration]
Knowledge/document management
Collaboration and messaging
Front end to application servers
Jim Rapoza, “Enterprise value of portals is clear,”
eWeek, September 13, 2001

10. Required capabilities

11. Typical services

12. uPortal

13. What is uPortal? Enterprise, horizontal portal
Framework for presenting aggregated content (channels or portlets)
Personalization
Role-based access control
Open source, collaborative effort
Java web application

14. Where does uPortal fit? People Browsing Devices uPortal with Channels
Data
Applications

15. uPortal interfaces Authentication Authorization Directory services
Proving your identity
Authorization
Deciding what you can access
Directory services
Such as populating EduPerson
User preferences
Profiles, structure, themes, skins
Channel information
Availability and configuration

16. What is a channel? Displays content Interactive applications XML feeds
Rich Site Summary (RSS)
Web services
Legacy systems
Interactive applications
Bookmarks
, chat, list serves

17. The Meteor channel

18. Flexible layouts Structures Themes Skins Tab / column Tree / column
Multi-column
Multi-row
Skins
Matrix, Java

19. User preferences

20. Tab / Column layout

21. Tree / Column layout

22. Content transformation
XML
XSLT
Processor
XHTML: Web Browser
HTML: PDA
Stylesheet
WML: Cell Phone

23. Multiple target devices

24. Theme: uosm

25. Theme: java

26. Theme: imm

27. Theme: matrix

28. What is new in 2.0? Abstraction of layout
Structure/theme transformations
Standard channel events
Standard CSS classes
More flexible publish/subscribe
User profile management
JNDI lookup service
WebProxy channel

29. What is planned for 2.1? Aggregated layouts
Publishing/channel administration
Frame support
Browser differentiation
Tree/column structure and themes
Web services extension
WML theme
Internationalization

30. What is planned for 2.2? Integrated content management
Workflow services
Composite group services
Channel development kit
User administration tools
Synchronization of multiple Java Virtual Machines

31. Channel developments Composite directory Calendaring (Washington)
Library system integration via Web services (Hull)
Single signon using WebISO (Hawaii)
Digital certificate support (CREN)
WSRP Support

32. JA-SIG Java In Administration Special Interest Group
Conferences biannually
Clearing house
Collaborative projects

33. Project Administrator
The End
Jim Farmer
Project Administrator
JA-SIG Collaborative

34. uPortal Framework Architecture

35. Basic architecture
uPortal
Framework
uPortal
database

36. Basic architecture Permissions authentication User preferences
iPlanet
LDAP
authentication
User preferences
Channel registry
Other uPortal Data
Oracle db2
mySQL

37. With channels Channel B Channel A uPortal Framework Channel C
Channel D
uPortal
database

38. Interface services
Provider - an application that provides service to an interface, and may use the uPortal database
Connector - a program that provides service from a standalone application to an interface. May also be called an adaptor

39. Interface options
Connector
Provider
External
Application

40. Architectural features
Extensive user customization
Inter-channel communications
Channel services
Normalized database schema
Profiles (multiple device management)
Layout-specific preferences channels
JNDI backbone

41. Channel services Services provide common functionality to the channels
Logging facility
“Password wallet”
File sharing, printing, mail, calendar
Channel synchronization
JNDI access

42. Inter-channel communication
Channel discovery
How to find a channel ? Need channel instance ID.
Functional names
Direct interaction
Channel access objects
Channel-bound public JNDI subtrees

43. Basic Architecture

44. Connectors may communicate
By calls to the application
By custom protocols over, say, sockets
By standards protocols such as LDAP
By business messages using Web services - XML, SOAP, UDDI

45. uPortal interfaces Permissions - permission management
Security Context - authentication, single signon
User preferences - layout, style sheet choices
Channel registry - channel specific persistent store

46. IChannel content must
Be well-formed XML such as XHTML, RSS, SVG, SMIL, or SOAP message (but not HTML)
Rendered by an XSL transformation using an XSL stylesheet

47. A channel may be extended
To support an application using custom code
Or a different form of content rendered using custom code
Through the IChannel interface

48. Web services Architecture

49. A Web service is XML business messages
using ebXML/SOAP compliant data transport
rendered using XSL transformations
for a remotely authenticated user

50. Web services architecture is
XML “tagged” data content
eXtensible Markup Language
ebXML/SOAP data transport
Simple Object Access Protocol
XSL transformations for presentation
eXtensible stylesheet language
and now
UDDI/WSDL directory services
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration, and Web Services Description Language

51. Is Web technology important?
Feb The University of Illinois releases the Mosaic browser
Oct The word e-commerce enters the vocabulary
Feb ED/SFA announces UML, XML, Java standards
Sep IBM announces “Web services”, a new architecture

52. Value of Web Services technology
Open standards Web service projects are taking one-fourth the time and costing one-fifth comparable projects using traditional technology. Performance is 2 to 10 times better than expected.
HFC Bank - IFX credit card application using XML, SOAP and XSLT
Deutsche Bank Bauspar - FixML security transaction integration using XML messages and XSL transformations
Hypo Vereinsbank - Integration
Based on presentations at the XSLT [Invitational] Conference Oxford, University, April 8-9, 2001

53. Standards-based Development

54. Standards-based channels
Design using current Web standards
Internet Engineering Task Force
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
IMS Global Learning, Inc.
ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) Labs
Extend current applications to meet academic needs
Hierarchical permissions
Secure anonymous authentication
Integrate with uPortal

55. Requested standards-based channels
Authentication/Authorization
SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)
Secure Logging
Syslog (IETF Syslog)
Log4j (Apache Foundation log4j)

56. Requested standards-based channels
Directory
eduPerson (Educause person object)
IMS (IMS Enterprise Specification)
DSML (Directory Service Markup Language)
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
Workflow
WfML (Work Flow Markup Language)
WSFL (Web Services Flow Language)

57. Requested standards-based channels
Internet chat
IMPP (IETF Internet Messaging and Presence Protocol)
Jabber (Jabber Foundation Jabber Protocol)
Distributed authoring
WebDAV (IETF Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
Extending a current uPortal channel authored by the University of British Columbia:
POP3 (IETF Post Office Protocol)
IMAP4 (Internet Mail Access Protocol)
SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol)

58. Requested standards-based channels
Electronic books
Open eBook
Electronic publications
DocBook
Customer Relationship Management
Customer Profile Exchange
In conjunction with the Open Knowledge Initiative:
instruction delivery
IMS (Instructional Management Systems)
SCORM (ADL’s Shareable Content Object Reference Model)
testing
IMS, SCORM