1. uPortal: architecture and features
Peter Kharchenko - Interactive Business Solutions, Inc.

2. uPortal releases and branches
2.0 was released February 2002.
Two code branches
2.0.x “bugfix” branch
no new features
frequent packaged releases
2.0.1 uPortal was released April 2002.
2.1 development branch
new features
fall-winter time release goals

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

4. What is uPortal? Enterprise, horizontal portal
Framework for presenting aggregated content (channels)
Personalization
Access control

5. Content rendering

6. Content Transformation
XML
XSLT
Processor
XHTML: Web Browser
HTML: PDA
Stylesheet
WML: Cell Phone

7. Multiple Target Devices

8. Tab / Column Layout

9. Tree / Column Layout

10. Channel
Elementary unit of presentation, defined by the IChannel interface
User Interaction External Information
Channel Content (Presentation)
IChannel
Set Runtime Data ()
Render XML ()

11. Framework Organization
User Interaction
Presentation
uPortal Framework
Channel
Channel
Channel

12. User Layout
User Layout is an abstract structure defining the overall content available to the user
userLayout is a tree structure consisting of “folders” and “channels”, the later always being the leaf nodes

13. User Layout

14. Structure Transformation
Channel
Column
Tab
User Layout

15. Theme Transformation

16. Compiling the Presentation
userLayout
Structure transformation
XSLT
structuredLayout
setRuntimeData()
XSLT
Channels
Theme transformation
renderXML()
HTML, WML VoiceML...

17. Caching
uPortal provides caching services to channels implementing ICacheable
User Interaction External Information
Channel Content (Presentation)
IChannel
setRuntimeData ()
generateKey()
isCacheValid()
renderXML()

18. Caching
Both channel and frame content is cached (theme transformations are expensive!)
Users character-level caching (fastest), falling back to SAX-level caching
HTML, XHTML and XML serializers support character caching

19. Rendering groups (2.1) Inter-channel communication (2.0)
identifying channels (channel JNDI contexts)
passing events using URL syntax
communication through shared objects
Tightly coupled channels (2.1)
interact with one channel immediately affects presentation of the other channels
2.1 allows channels to declare their rendering dependencies that define rendering groups

20. Channel services (2.0) Access points to common services
Bound to channel’s JNDI context
Examples:
logging
channel storage
calendaring
printing
Configured in properties/services.xml

21. Personalization

22. What can be personalized
User layout
Skins
colors, fonts, textures, etc.
using standard uPortal CSS classes
Theme transformation
target markup language
presentation implementation
Structure transformation
presentation structure and navigation

23. Organizing the settings ?
Users switch between different settings because:
they’re using a different browser/client
their mood
school told them to do so
A profile combines all settings into one unit
User can switch between profiles
Profiles can be associated with particular browser types for automatic selection

24. Preferences channel (2.0)

25. Preferences channel (2.0)
Allows to customize
layout
skins
user profiles
theme transformation
profile-browser mapping
Issues
modular, but very big
layout management module is specific to tab-column structure, while its general alternative is unintuitive
Result: layout/preferences management implementation complexities is preventing development of new layout structures

26. Managing preferences in 2.1
Preferences channel
profile management and skin selection
In-layout preferences management
user layout management
stylesheet-defined param/attribute management
default tab
column width
etc.

27. Managing preferences in 2.1
Abstracted layout management code
org.jasig.portal.layout.*
implements all layout management operations
provides additional layout management info.
Theme stylesheet
renders the layout in both normal and “preferences management” mode
uses uPortal URL syntax to talk to the abstracted layout management code that does the work
Result
intuitive layout management
easier to write then a prefs. channel module
easier to implement alternative structures

28. Imposing restrictions
Look & feel
limiting skin selection
allowing only system profiles
single structure stylesheet
User layouts
Channel selection (publish/subscribe)
Template users (default layouts)
Aggregated layouts (2.1)

29. Aggregated layouts (2.1) Create/maintain layout fragments
Push/present fragments to the users
Allow for general, flexible restrictions on how fragments can be changed and rearranged
Example
“library tab”, “department tab”
user can not remove “department tab”
user can not move channels within a library tab
user can add department-published channels to the department tab, but not other channels

30. Security and directory access

31. Authentication Flexible authentication API
can accommodate both local and distributed authentication schemes
allows for single sign-on to back-end services
Existing provider implementations:
Local
directly authenticating against DB
LDAP
Distributed
CAS

32. Authorization Permission (IPermission interface)
activity (publish, write, read, etc.)
principal (user, service, channel, etc.)
target (channel, document, group, etc.)
owner (channel, owner, framework, etc.)
type (grant, deny)
Reference implementation uses RDB
Managed by “CPermissionsManager”
Pluggable permission logic (2.1)
define custom permission resolution rules

33. Directory access
Directory information is available to the framework and uPortal channels
Can accommodate multiple, disparate directory information sources
Current implementation
supports multiple LDAP and RDBM sources
configured in PersonDirs.xml
Standardized on eduPerson naming

34. Groups General API for maintaining groups of entities
Used in the uPortal to
define groups of users for authorization purposes
define category structure of published channels
Managed by “CGroupsManager”
Composite groups (2.1)
use multiple, disparate sources for group persistence

35. Groups & Permissions CGroupsManager CPermissionsManager
Can be used from within other channels
used by the uPortal’s channel manager
Integrated in 2.1 branch
Not part of the 2.0.x distributions, but can be downloaded and installed independently

36. Publish/Subscribe Channel publishing document
Channel parameters
Default values
Modification permissions
Descriptions
Publish/Subscribe steps
Step sequence
Instructions, help
Flexible channel publishing

37. Channel archives (2.1)
Provide a standardized packaging for channel distribution
Transparent installation and configuration
interactive installation GUI
parameter validation
maintaining WebApp file stricture
Versioning
upgrade capability

38. Distributed channels (2.1)
SOAP-based content retrieval
Web services protocol, very similar to the proposed WSRP
Sharing uPortal channels:
present SOAP access point for external entities to access uPortal channels
Viewing remote content:
publish a channel running on some other servier
Sharing amongst uPortal installations
Integrating with non-uPortal platforms

39. Improved clustering support (2.1)
Means to integrate multi-JVM portal installations
Cache synchronization
permissions
groups
channel registry
uPortal JNDI context synchronization
… would like to avoid EJB-server complexities

40. Information on 2.1 features
UNM developer’s meeting minutes
uPortal web page