Portals, uportal, and JA-SIG

Transcription

1 Portals, uportal, and JA-SIG Justin Tilton, Chief Executive Officer instructional media + magic, inc. at the NCHELP Annual Training Conference Salt Lake City, Utah November 12, 2001

2 The aggregation game

3 Some Commercial Portals Sun Microsystems (iplanet) Epicentric (Foundation Server) Oracle (Application Server Portal) IBM (WebSphere Portal/Jetspeed) Computer Associates (Jasmine ii) Microsoft (SharePoint Portal Server) Sequoia (XML Portal Server) PeopleSoft (PeopleSoft Portal) Citrix (XPS) Sybase (Enterprise Portal)

4 Common goals/different technologies System Integration & Consistency Single Sign-on & Security Personalization Collaboration Component Reuse Task Management & Workflow Internationalization Customer Relationship Management Syndicated Content Subscription

5 Higher Education Most of these features apply to Higher Education System Integration & Consistency Single Sign-on & Security Personalization Collaboration Component Reuse Task Management & Workflow Internationalization Customer Relationship Management Syndicated Content Subscription uportal is bridging the gap between corporate portals and the needs of Higher Education Institutions

6 The higher education web world Administration Library Instruction Research

7 Distance learning One of the most complex portal applications is instruction. Several channels have to be synchronized together to: present learning materials and assessments monitor the learner s progress and adapt the presentation to the learner s knowledge audit the progression through content and perhaps even simulate a process simultaneously

8 Students expectations shaped by... Their experience applying for admissions and financial aid Their use of financial services portals Their use of the Internet Their life in a real-time, information rich environment

9 Students now expect... Customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week Complete information from a single source Information by Web, , telephone, facsimile, and wireless devices response time of 15 seconds for telephone, 10 seconds for Web, and 2 hours for and facsimile access to a complete customer history

10 Why are portals important Productivity for knowledge workers Preferred by users Market share Brand identity A viable architecture for information services Time to market Improved services Lower costs

11 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 Students expect all of these functions in an academic portal.

12 Yahoo, THE Portal

13 MyYahoo, a personal portal

14 Required capabilities Type of Portal JSP Chat & Mail Content Classification and Search Web Services Enterprise??? Collaboration??? Knowledge management??? Front end???? uportal

15 Available services Directory Authentication Roles Groups Wallet Authorization and chat Web Services XML, SOAP, UDDI Workflow Calendaring Announcements Type of Portal Enterprise X????? Collaboration??? X? X X?? Knowledge management? X? X?? Front end???????????

16 Required authentication Type of Portal Local Remote Anonymous Enterprise X Collaboration? X Knowledge management? Front end? X uportal

17 Students prefer Single sign-on even if that means revealing personal logons and passwords [aggregation/credential caching] Selection of content [channels] and layout [user profile] Common channel navigation and icons [consistent look & feel]

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

19 A Student Portal

20 CalPoly San Luis Obispo

21 University of British Columbia

22 Denison University

23 Denison University

24 University of California, Irvine

25 University of California, Irvine

26 University of Delaware

27 University of Delaware

28 University of Hawaii

29 A student s portal Portal Personal channel selections University services Government Organizations Businesses

30 What is uportal? Enterprise portal Framework for presenting aggregated content (channels) Personalization Role-based access control Open source, collaborative effort Java web application

31 uportal hierarchy People Browsing Devices uportal with Channels Data Applications

32 uportal Interfaces Authentication 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

33 What is a Channel? Displays content XML feeds Rich Site Summary (RSS) Web services Legacy systems Interactive applications Bookmarks , chat, list serves The Meteor Project

34 Channels Company Apache (Jetspeed) Plumtree Epicentric BEA Systems Name Portlets Gadgets Modules Portlets

35 RSS Channel

36 The Meteor channel

37 Basic architecture uportal Framework uportal database

38 With channels Channel B Channel A Channel C Channel D uportal Framework uportal database

39 Basic Architecture

40 Basic Architecture Permissions authentication User preferences Channel registry Other uportal Data iplanet LDAP Oracle db2 mysql

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

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

43 Flexible Layouts Structures Tab/ column Tree / column Themes Multi-column Multi-row Skins Matrix, Java

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

45 Multiple Target Devices

46 Tab / Column Layout

47 Tree / Column Layout

48 Theme: uosm

49 Theme: java

50 Theme: imm

51 Theme: matrix

52 Interfaces Facilitate Implementation Alice wants to see the faculty calendar. Look in our LDAP directory Interface Is Alice a faculty member? or Implementations Contact our HR application

53 What s 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

54 User Profiles Profile defines: Structure/Theme stylesheets A set of user preferences User layout Browser-specific preferences User-Agent ID maps to a profile Initial profile mapping

55 User preferences Portal = rendering + customization User Preferences Channel Swappable layout and preference management modules Profile management module Tab-column specific UP module Skin Selection

56 User Preferences

57 Putting the pieces together A transition from: No internet to search engine portals to custom portals to information aggregation portals to web services portals

58 A Web service is XML business messages using ebxml/soap compliant data transport rendered using XSL transformations for a remotely authenticated user

59 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

60 Department of Education standards Announced [Feb 2000] Announced [March 2001] Expected SFA UML XML Java SOAP XML-RPC UDDI/WSDL SAML Meteor Proposed, with convergence

61 ED/SFA Portal Strategy Phase 1- Created an Enterprise Portal Vision completed March 2001 Phase 2 - Develop an enterprise repository of reusable portal components using the existing Schools Portal completed November 2001 Utilizes J2EE standards and an Open Source Framework Software Developers Conference, November 8, 2001

62 Benefits of the Portal Strategy Creates a Lightweight Portal Framework that reduces custom coding and development complexity and ensures that portlets can be reused on multiple portal pages. Supports WAP and other wireless technologies for future initiatives SFA portal standards are available to the community Community has the opportunity to integrate with SFA systems. Software Developers Conference, November 8, 2001

63 SFA Enterprise Portal to Be a phased development of students and financial partners portals Consolidate, integrate and eliminate multiple Websites Provide common look and feel across all SFA e-commerce products Enhance the existing Schools Portal Single signon New architecture Common look & feel Software Developers Conference, November 8, 2001

64 An observation To reach students, we [the student loan industry] will have to communicate with them through the school s portal. Will Thien, Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation at the Software Developers Conference, November 8, 2001

65 The End Justin E. Tilton