Architecting Portal Solutions: Applications Development

B.3 What's new with Version 5.0

WebSphere Portal includes new functions and enhancements that make it easier to install, administer, design, and use the portal. Go to http://pvcid.raleigh.ibm.com/wpf/ic/wpo500/ent/en/InfoCenter/index.html.

B.3.1 New features

This section provides information about new features that are provided with WebSphere Portal.

• New versions of software components to support the latest technology

  Many software components have been updated from the last release. Refer to the Components overview topic for details on the software versions included in this release.

• Additional database support

  Database support has been extended to include additional database products. See the supported hardware and software topic to view the supported databases.

• Document Manager to help you manage information

  Document Manager is a new document repository and management system that replaces Portal Content Organizer. Users navigate a hierarchy of folders that contain documents. Administrators can use Document Manager for project management tasks such as access control, document approval, and tracking versions of documents.

• WebSphere Portal Productivity Components to help you author documents in the portal

  These components provide text editing, spreadsheet, and presentation functions. They allow authoring of documents directly within the portal. They are not intended to provide all the functionality associated with a full-fledged productivity application. Instead, they provide a version of the most widely used functionality typically available in a productivity application of this type.

• Lotus Collaboration Center features that improve productivity

  Lotus Collaboration Center includes components that WebSphere Portal can use to find, connect, and work with people. Lotus Collaboration Center now includes the following:

  • People Finder portlet provides an online directory for finding, contacting, and working with colleagues.

  • My Lotus Team Workplaces includes support for Lotus Team Workplace.

  • Lotus Web Conferences includes support for Lotus Instant Messaging.

  • Collaboration Center now installs and deploys two portlets that were available separately in previous releases:

    • Lotus Instant Messaging Contact List

    • Lotus Instant Messaging Who Is Here

  • A Collaboration Center sample page is now installed and deployed to provide a single page that displays all five Collaboration Center portlets.

• New and enhanced business portlets to improve productivity

  The following portlets are included with WebSphere Portal:

  • Internet Mail Box (Mail Box) is new. This portlet allows the user to receive, compose, and send Internet e-mail using either a Web browser or wireless phone. The Mail Box allows the user to view supported files such as rich text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. It allows loading and saving attachments to and from the Document Manager application. It also provides a Rich Text Editor to compose e-mails.

  • A single Notes portlet is now available. The Lotus Notes and Domino portlet represents a consolidation of multiple Notes portlets that were previously shipped.

  • A single iNotes portlet is now available. The Domino Web Access (iNotes) portlet represents a consolidation of multiple iNotes portlets that were previously shipped.

  • A Newsgroup portlet is now available for subscribing to and browsing Internet news groups.

  • The MyList portlet allows for simple check-off lists to be created and maintained.

• New search features to improve search capabilities

  New search functions are included that can find, categorize, summarize, and support more than 200 document formats.

• Portlet builders to help you create portlets

  Application portlet builders are included that enable users to create portlets that can access and manipulate data in an enterprise application.

B.3.2 Installation improvements

Improvements for the installation program include:

• Changes to the installation program for quicker installation

  You can get WebSphere Portal up and running quickly. The installation program enables you to install the base portal without having to perform much planning or provide much input during installation.

  In addition, the Cloudscape™ Java database is automatically installed for storing portal configuration data so that you can get up and running quickly. Because Cloudscape is automatically installed, you do not have to plan your database setup prior to installing WebSphere Portal. Of course, if you plan to use a different database, you can transfer your data after you install Portal.

• New tasks to help you configure WebSphere Portal to use other software

  Configuration tasks are provided to get WebSphere Portal working in your specific environment. The configuration tasks are commands that you run to customize WebSphere Portal to use different software—such as collaborative components, a database other than Cloudscape, or an LDAP server for security. You can also use configuration tasks to alter the portal configuration without having to reinstall the product.

B.3.3 Improvements for administering and designing WebSphere Portal

This section provides information about improvements that can help you administer or design WebSphere Portal.

• A redesigned administrative interface

  Because an administrative interface is shipped with WebSphere Portal, you do not have to design your own. The administrative interface has been redesigned to enhance your experience with the portal. Enhancements include:

  • New administrative portlets

  • Navigation improvements

  • New themes and skins

  • Updates to existing administrative and customizer themes and skins

  • Context-sensitive links

• Cooperative portlets

  Cooperative portlets is a new capability that enables portlet interaction on a page, including the Click-to-Action technology introduced in V4.2, but expanding on that feature to include more programming and user-interaction enhancements.

• Enhanced support for managing user data

  WebSphere Portal uses Member Manager, a component that manages data for users and groups of users. Member Manager can access user information in different types of repositories such as supported LDAP directories and databases. Member Manager replaces the WebSphere Member Services that was shipped with previous releases of WebSphere Portal.

• Improved function with XML access

  You can use XML access to configure the portal. XML access is the batch processing interface for portal configuration updates. You can use XML access to export entire portal configurations or parts of the configuration to an XML file, ^[5] and to re-create the exported configurations from such a file. Because of the new use of Global Unique IDs (GUIDs) instead of Object IDs (OIDs) to identify portal resources, exported configurations are portable across WebSphere Portal installations. Function and documentation were both improved to help you better understand the use of XML access for portal configuration.

• Support for user-friendly URLs

  WebSphere Portal now provides support for user-friendly URLs, which you can now define and map pages to using the portal administrative interface.

• Improved handling of error messages

  WebSphere Portal has an improved logging mechanism based on WebSphere Application Server V5. Now error messages are localized to improve access and usability.

• The ability to arrange content in a tree structure

  Portal administration is made more flexible by arranging portal pages in a tree hierarchy for administration. The new portlet access control component is sensitive to that tree structure so that permissions granted to a portal page are also respected by its child pages.

• Portlet menus for improved navigation

  Portlet menus are an extension to the Portlet API that allow portlets to contribute menu items to the portal navigation. In this release of WebSphere Portal, helper classes have been provided that simplify the development of portlet menu items. These can be created using a static XML file or dynamically generated and updated with each request.

• Transcoding

  WebSphere Portal allows administrators to adapt portal content for diverse situations through transcoding technology. Administrators can now use transcoding at the portlet level.

• Portal Toolkit

  Portal Toolkit includes updates for WebSphere Version 5 as well as updated portlet wizards. New portlet examples are also included.

• Web Clipping Portlet updates

  Programmaing changes improve the performance of the Web Clipping portlet and simplify the creation of other clipping portlets.

B.3.4 Removed features

Support for portlets published as remote Web services has been removed for this release. This support is expected to be provided in the future. Please check release notes for updates.

B.3.5 Contents

This section provides information about the products and components included with WebSphere Portal.

WebSphere Portal

WebSphere Portal is a J2EE application that runs on WebSphere Application Server. Its main function is to serve the WebSphere Portal framework to the desktops and mobile devices of portal users. WebSphere Portal creates an environment that provides the connectivity, administration, and presentation services required. WebSphere Portal includes several new functions and enhancements that make it easier to design, administer, and use.

WebSphere Portal Content Publishing

WebSphere Portal Content Publishing provides a Web content management solution that gives nontechnical users greater control over content published to portals and Web sites. Users benefit from the combined power of having one place to manage content for their Portal environment or other Web sites and an easy-to-use Web interface. This interface puts content management back into the hands of nontechnical business users and provides them with tools (such as personalization rules, templates, workflow, and versioning) that make the content creation process simple yet controlled. WebSphere Portal Content Publishing decreases Web maintenance and administration costs, increases sales and profits by deploying timely and personalized content, and improves efficiency by getting all content produced in an enterprise to the Web.

WebSphere Portal Content Publishing includes a variety of functions. The core part of WebSphere Portal Content Publishing involves the content creation process. The Web browser interface enables users to contribute content to a Web site with little training in a simple and controlled manner. This solution allows large teams to work together, jointly where necessary, but with enough isolation to manage content changes in their respective work groups until they are ready to share them with the extended contribution team. Versions of changed content can be stored in the versioning repository for later reuse. WebSphere Portal Content Publishing manages the task lists of each user, maintains access control over what content each user can see or change, and coordinates the approval and publishing process when content has been approved. This is all accomplished through a workflow process that can be customized to meet the needs of each individual customer.

WebSphere Portal Content Publishing includes two personalization technologies to dynamically tailor Web content to meet the needs of different users and groups:

• Rules-based filtering to display selected content to targeted users

• Matching techniques that extract visitor behavior and tailor the content within individual portlets based on that behavior

This technology creates a customized user experience for improved employee productivity and more effective consumer messaging. To augment the personalization features, WebSphere Portal Content Publishing provides a reporting mechanism that assesses the effectiveness of business rules and builds reports for the WebSphere Portal Content Publishing user to leverage when analyzing the impact of targeted content on consumers. The reporting mechanism provides data to Web site managers to help them revise targeting strategies based on user response to content they have received.

Lotus Collaborative Components

Lotus Collaborative Components are UI-neutral API methods and tag libraries that allow developers who are writing portlets for WebSphere Portal to add Lotus Software collaborative functionality to their portlets. Application developers using Collaborative Components can design and implement UI extensions that leverage the features of Domino, Lotus Team Workplace, Lotus Instant Messaging, and Lotus Discovery Server.

Portal Toolkit

Portal Toolkit provides the capabilities to customize and manage the enterprise portal and create, test, debug, and deploy individual portlets and Web content. Templates enable developers to quickly and easily create their own portlets. Debugging and deployment tools shorten the development cycle. Sample portlets that demonstrate best programming practices are also provided.

Portal Toolkit plugs into WebSphere Studio Site Developer or WebSphere Studio Application Developer, providing a comprehensive framework for the development of e-business applications.

A copy of WebSphere Studio Site Developer licensed for use only with Portal Toolkit is included. Consult the product license for details.

IBM WebSphere Application Server Version 5.0 Fix Pack 1

IBM WebSphere Application Server is a Web application server that provides J2EE services for the WebSphere Portal environment. It executes the Java portlets, JavaBeans, JSP files, and Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) used by WebSphere Portal. This component is the platform upon which WebSphere Portal runs.

IBM Directory Server Version 5.1

IBM Directory Server is a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory that runs as a standalone daemon. In the WebSphere Portal environment it stores, updates, and retrieves user-specific data related to authentication, such as user IDs and passwords.

DB2 Enterprise Server Edition Version 8.1 Fix Pack 1

DB2 Enterprise Edition is a Web-enabled relational-database management system. In the WebSphere Portal environment, DB2 stores portal configuration data as well as portal-specific, access-control, and user data.

IBM WebSphere Studio Site Developer Version 5.0.1 Fix Pack 1

IBM WebSphere Studio Site Developer is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for building, testing, and deploying J2EE applications. It provides integrated development support for building J2EE applications with HTML pages, servlets, JSPs, and EJBs. It also creates Web service applications with open standards, generates XML documents from DTDs, and enables a collaborative team development environment. It enables end-to-end local and remote testing and creates high-quality applications using wizards, code generators, and best practices.

WebSphere Translation Server Version 5.0

Translation Server is an MT (Machine Translation) offering that helps you remove language as a barrier to global communication and e-commerce. It enables enterprises to provide Web pages, e-mail messages, and chat conversations in multiple languages and in real time. Specifically designed for enterprise use, the Translation Server allows companies to leverage their existing Web infrastructure to provide content to users in their native language at a fraction of the cost of professional translation.

Based on IBM machine translation technology, Translation Server is designed for scalability on multiple platforms. It can run on a dedicated server using RMI and Java protocol to communicate with the WebSphere Application Server. Web page HTML content can also be translation-enabled to support HTTP servers from Netscape, Apache, Microsoft, or IBM.

Translation Server consists of:

• MT engines for translating text from one language into another language (such as English to Spanish)

• User Dictionary Manager tools that allow specific words to be added to a domain (for example, tuning for a specific application or adding of slang or domain-specific phrases and terms)

• Support for WebSphere Application Server and HTTP servers from Microsoft, Netscape, Apache, and IBM

B.3.6 Available with WebSphere Portal Extend

The following products and components are included with WebSphere Portal Extend:

Lotus Collaboration Center Version 5.0

WebSphere Portal featuring Collaboration Center capabilities offers an integrated framework of e-workplace components for finding, connecting, and working with people:

• People Finder portlet

• Directory Connector

• Sample configuration

• My Lotus Team Workplaces portlet

• Lotus Web Conferencing (Lotus Instant Messaging) portlet

Using these components, users have immediate access to a searchable directory of people that is integrated with their workplaces and their e-meetings within the collaborative portal. Users can find people in the directory, see their online status, and interact with them using instant messaging and other actions provided by people links. In addition to search features, the People Finder provides views of each person's directory record and his or her place in the organizational context. People links are visible in workplaces and e-meetings to make employee interaction fast and easy, improving personal and organizational productivity.

IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise Server 5.0.12

IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise Server and Notes is groupware software that provides messaging and collaboration features. Lotus Notes is the e-mail, calendaring, group scheduling, Web access, and information management client. Domino is the integrated messaging and Web application server.

Domino Directory can provide your primary corporate directory or the secondary LDAP service that complements another LDAP service ^[6] in your portal environment. As a secondary LDAP service, Domino Directory provides user access to Lotus Notes-based information sources for Collaborative Components and collaborative portlets.

Usage restrictions apply. You are authorized to install and use Domino solely and exclusively in connection with your use of Lotus Instant Messaging and Lotus Team Workplace. Consult the product license for details.

Instant messaging and online awareness

Instant messaging and online awareness (also known as people awareness) is available. Using Lotus Instant Messaging, portal users can discover if others are available to chat, receive e-mail, share applications and other tools in an e-meeting or Web conference, and (if Lotus Discovery Server is enabled) find documents authored by others and display expertise profiles from the Knowledge Map.

Usage restrictions apply. For example, the e-meeting capabilities of Lotus Instant Messaging are not licensed for use. Consult the product license for details.

Virtual teamrooms

A Web-based solution is available for creating team workspaces for collaboration. Using Lotus Team Workplace, portal users can work securely with colleagues, suppliers, partners, and customers. Lotus Team Workplace provides teams with workspaces where they can reach consensus through discussions, collaborate on documents, and coordinate plans, tasks, and resources.

IBM Tivoli Web Site Analyzer Version 4.5

IBM Tivoli Web Site Analyzer is a Web application that captures and analyzes Web site data to provide useful reports about visitor traffic, visitor behavior, site usage, site content, and site structure. You can build customized reports from predefined report elements or build custom reports that collect information specific to your site. Installed as a Web application on WebSphere Application Server, Tivoli Web Site Analyzer allows you to create trend reports that show Web site visitor traffic, site usage growth, and changes over time.

The new enhancements in Tivoli Web Site Analyzer include integrated support for WebSphere Portal. This support includes specific report elements that enable you to analyze portal usage data such as a ranking of the portal pages viewed by visitors and portal login trends. Using this integration involves configuring the portal to generate application level logs, importing the logs to Tivoli Web Site Analyzer, and creating reports.

IBM Lotus Extended Search 4.0

IBM Lotus Extended Search is a Web-based solution that supports searching across distributed, heterogeneous, structured, and unstructured data sources through a single point of access. Although it does not require you to create a central index for the sources that you want to search, Lotus Extended Search serves as a complimentary solution to products that provide indexing services such as Lotus Discovery Server.

By entering a single request from a Web browser, you can search potentially thousands of data repositories and the Internet, simultaneously locating people with expert knowledge. Lotus Extended Search handles the logistics required to access many diverse sources simultaneously without requiring that you know any details about the various search interfaces. It also produces a single, ranked result set that contains responses from multiple sources. Links in the result set enable you to go directly to documents of interest or download attachments.

Lotus Extended Search can search and retrieve documents from the following types of sources:

• Eighteen popular Web search and news sites

• Lotus repositories such as Notes databases, Domino.Doc libraries, Lotus Team Workplaces, and Lotus Discovery Server knowledge maps

• Mail systems such as those managed by Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange

• Instant messaging systems such as Lotus Instant Messaging

• ODBC-compliant relational databases such as DB2, Oracle, Sybase, and MS SQL Server

• Document management systems such as IBM DB2 Information Integrator for Content ^[7]

• File systems

• LDAP-compliant directories

• Full text indexes such as those created with WebSphere Portal, Domino Domain Index, Microsoft Index Server, and Microsoft Site Server

With the Lotus Extended Search C++ and Java API you can extend support to other types of sources that you need to search—such as proprietary, commercial, or legacy databases in your enterprise not mentioned in the preceding list.

B.3.7 Supplementary products

Though the following products are not included with WebSphere Portal, they can further enhance the features and functions provided:

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business Version 4.1

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business is an authorization and management solution that scales across the entire enterprise. A robust and secure policy management tool for e-business and distributed applications, it addresses the challenges of escalating security costs, growing complexity, and the need for uniform security policies across platforms. Tivoli Access Manager unites core security technologies around common security policies to help reduce implementation time and management complexity, thereby lowering the total cost of security-enhanced computing.

IBM Content Manager Version 8.2

IBM Content Manager is an unstructured content management system optimized for large collections of large objects—from scanned images, facsimiles, and PC files to XML and rich multimedia and Web content. IBM Content Manager also provides folder management and document workflow and provides the content infrastructure for applications—from call centers, high-volume claims processing, and accounts payable to e-commerce catalogues and e-learning.

Lotus Discovery Server

Lotus Discovery Server is a comprehensive knowledge server that lets portal users search or browse for information and subject matter experts (SMEs) from multiple locations, collaborate with colleagues instantly, increase knowledge-sharing, and decrease time spent looking for needed resources—all from a Web browser.

Lotus Discovery Server finds content, discovers relationships, locates expertise, and returns more accurate results through automated collaborative filtering based on usage. It does this on a backdrop of collaborative tools that instantly link people through awareness and instant messaging, allowing you to:

• Search and find answers quickly while avoiding information overload

• Identify documents, people, and places with a single search across your entire organization

• Capture and quickly catalog information and intellectual assets to avoid duplicate work

• Identify the experts for collaboration—on demand—to improve decision cycle times and to leverage skills across departmental and geographical boundaries.

WebSphere Edge Server

The WebSphere Edge Server architecture is an extension to the WebSphere software programming model that brings the WebSphere software platform to the edge of the network. It enables unprecedented performance, scalability, and availability for sophisticated e-business applications and includes the following features:

• Application offload

• Content distribution

• Enhanced caching

• Enhanced load balancing

• Security

• Transactional quality of service

^[5]For example, specific pages

^[6]For example, IBM Directory Server, Windows 2000 Active Directory, or Sun ONE

^[7]Enterprise Information Portal