uPortal Developers' Notebook

There needs to be a uPortal Developers' Notebook style document, a guide to understanding the uPortal code.

"As a beginner, after I went through the installation of uPortal with Oracle support, implementation of related portlet, CDK in the tutorials, I want to go down to the code. But the source code looks overwhelming complicated that I lost my direction quickly at "redirectString" of "loginservlet".

Is there any way that could be used to alleviate the pressure of understanding the system? Thanks!"

- A newcomer comment on jasig-portal

Designing a next-generation portal

We have created an open platform for true enterprise integration, based on a component architecture and Java standards. I am excited to start developing applications with NewPortal. The end result is an integrator's dream enterprise portal. Portals are the ultimate end-user integration points for communities or businesses. NewPortal makes integration as easy as selecting portlets, customizing them live, and dropping them in to your portal for immediate use. For those needing more complex integration, the NewPortal API provides the clear assembly and interception points for component building and integration.

Since our components are simply ... dependency-injected Spring components, integrators with Spring experience will immediately be up and running. This is where NewPortal really shines for system integrators. We have found that every portal requires integration with existing business processes. Typical cases are integrating user attributes from diverse applications, web content and service integration, authentication (SSO) integration with existing LDAP or other commercial databases, and complex authorization rules based on access control lists. NewPortal clearly isolates these integration points in the NewPortal API, based on existing Java standards. This is where NewPortal provides a clear and open advantage.

This quote is discussing Jetspeed2. How do the goals for which Jetspeed2 was designed relate to the goals of the next generation of uPortal?

University of Manchester seeks senior Java developer

The University is seeking to recruit an experienced Senior Java Developer to join a development team for the university portal.

Funding Opensource Development

What is worth learning and emulating from the School Tool project?

Portal conference @ Gettysburg June

A portal conference at Gettysburg right after the JA-SIG uPortal conference this summer. I hope uPortal will be represented and considered at the Gettysburg conference.

Decline of portals?

It's clear that the framework, the portal platform, will have to do more. It's not going to be enough to just be a boxy view on the world. Context is important and can drive providing the maximum value on that zeroth click. And sure, tagging and social networking will be ways to make intelligent predictions about what content the user will most appreciate having highlighted.

This doesn't mean the decline of portals. It means a whole new generation of smarter, better portals.

Portlet training

Unicon will be offering three portlet training courses hosted between February and March, at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia and at the University of Manchester in Manchester, England, and in Florida this winter.

What version of uPortal should I deploy

People continue to ask me what version of uPortal I would recommend they consider for near-term deployment. This probably means that the uPortal project could better communicate about deployment recommendations.

My answer to the question from April 2005 still feels right.

Christmas Colors

We now have nightly Maven builds including Clover testcase coverage reporting for uPortal.

Maybe there will be some unit tests in our stockings this year...

JA-SIG Facebook

Are you a member (or groupie?) of the Java Architectures Special Interest Group? Consider adding a profile on the JA-SIG Facebook.

Don't knock it.

"Right now, we do not require anything from the portal further than what the 2.1 series offers. This very well may change. But for the needs of our community, at this point in time we see no need to upgrade our version of uPortal."

- from the jasig-portal email list, 15 December 2005.

The velocity of persuit of revolutionary change should be balanced with the benefit of what already exists.

Or, in order for deployers to keep up with the upgrades, the upgrade path needs to be darn near painless. I'm learning that I've greatly under-valued the importance of a clear, compelling, automated, foolproof upgrade path in the uPortal project in the past. On the bright side, I'm learning.

Sakai conference Vancouver May 30 - June 2

Mark your calendar now for the Sakai portion of Community Source Week May 30 through June 2 in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Sheraton Wall Centre.

uPortal conference 4-6 June 2006 in Vancouver

Mark your calendar now for the 2006 uPortal conference 4-6 June in Vancouver, B.C., Canada (at the Westin Bayshore). Those of us from the States: probably a good idea to start acquiring a passport now.

uPortal-Sakai Integration BOF

The uPortal-Sakai integration Birds of a Feather at JA-SIG Austin identified opportunities for integration projectlets. Most immediately promising is making Sakai announcements available via xmessage and consuming them as announcements topics in the Columbia University announcements channel.

WSRP consumed by rich clients?

Shoji Kajita's talk Aggregation of WSRP channels on Eclipse Rich Client Platform was interesting. I hadn't thought about the need and role for rich clients in accomplishing integration with tools like PDAs, iPods, etc.

uPortal-Sakai Integration

Presented a session on uPortal-Sakai integration at JA-SIG Austin. I was disappointed to have little actual demonstrable technical progress to report / show, but the attendees seemed interested even in a presentation of the ideas about and taxonomy of integration options. Slides soon.

uPortal 3 Sneak Preview

I was very impressed by Eric Dalquist and Peter Kharchenko's presentation uPortal 3 Sneak Preview at JA-SIG Austin. Powerful pluggable rendering pipeline and Spring-configuration throughout are important architectural improvements.

uPortal project opportunities for improvement

Attended Jim Helwig (University of Wisconsin-Madison)'s presentation Jumping In: Migrating an Enterprise System from Commercial Software to Open Source at JA-SIG in Austin.

Jim highlighted some ways in which the uPortal project could be better:

• Webproxy features (addressed by Wisconsin's web proxy portlet)


• Documentation


• Robustness

Dynamic Channel Titles kiosk

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people who gathered around to see my demonstration of the Dynamic Channel Titles feature available in uPortal 2.5.1, and which will also be available in 2.4.4 and 2.6. A very modest feature, but I hope it's a good example of carefully evolving the codebase and functionality of uPortal.

Sakai 2.1.0 docs as text

Sakai 2.1.0 docs as text.