Mashup-Aware Corporate Portals Sandy Pérez and Oscar Díaz ONEKIN Research Group University of the Basque Country San Sebastián (Spain) The 11th International

Mashup-Aware Corporate Portals

Sandy Pérez and Oscar Díaz

ONEKIN Research GroupUniversity of the Basque Country

San Sebastián (Spain)

The 11th International Conference on Web Information System Engineering

December 13th, 2010

S. Pérez & O. Díaz

THE SETTING

2


Portal, Portlet & Portlet Container

“A portal is a web application whose main focus is on integration and personalization”

“A portlet is a Java technology based web component, managed by a portlet container”

“A portlet container runs portlets and provides them with the required runtime environment.”


Portal rendering sample

WebSphere portlet

Plumptree portlet

Oracle portlet

eXo portal


Portlets as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Web componentsThe very same portlet can be re-used in

different portals

Adaptation is a must to customize the portlet to the portal setting

Mashup as a customization technique for portlets into portals

5


Sample scenario: “Mashuped portlet”

When THIS portlet is offered through THIS portal then… add weather widget

THIS PORTLET

THIS PORTAL

S. Pérez & O. Díaz 7

Composition: Challenges

Weath

er

Widget

FlightB

ooking

portlet

Provider: company A

Provider: portal user

Portal company B


Widget being “mashuped” into portlet BY THE PORTAL


Mashup-aware portals

PortalAggregation of

content

Messaging & Collaboration

Enterprise Search

Customization &Personalization

Security

Browser

Information Sources

ContentManagement

Content Presentation

Workflow

Mashup weaver+

Mashup-Aware Corporate Portals

Sandy Pérez and Oscar Díaz

ONEKIN Research GroupUniversity of the Basque Country

San Sebastián (Spain)

The 11th International Conference on Web Information System Engineering

December 13th, 2010


CHALLENGES

11


Challenge 1: Composition

So far, portlets & widgets are co-located

Portals should permit portlets to inlay mashup content (e.g. widgets)

Weath

er

Widget

Location &

Date

Location &Date

Weath

er

Widget


Challenge 2: Orchestration

Not just visual integration

Operational integration• Parameter passing

Enhanced experience


Portlet mashuping: three dimensions

14


REALIZATION

15


“Where” dimension

16


“Where” dimension: the issue

17


“Where” dimension: realization

Portlets return markup fragments to be rendered by the portal

This markup now holds placeholders

Augmented mashup is restricted to these placeholders

18



(What, Where) coordinate

Insert WeatherForecastGadget into top-mashcell

20


(What, Where) coordinate: realization

XML Binding Language (XBL) permits to describe bindings to elements in other documents• binding: XBL document• bound element: specificied through a CSS

It is a W3C candidate recomendation

21


(What, Where) coordinate as an XBL

Bound element: top-mashcell of portlet markup

Binding: WeatherForecastGadget

22


XBL snippet

23

WHEREWHAT


(How, Where) coordinate

Obtain city parameter of gadget from “destination” entry at the portlet


(How, Where) coordinate as an XBL

Bound element: destination node

Binding: handler for destination propagation

25


XBL snippet

26

WHERE

HOW


CONCLUSIONS

27


Conclusions

This work introduces a mashup-like approach to personalization in portals

Once the portal is deployed, users can supplement portal services with their own widgets that easy the fulfillment of portlet services

Implemented for Liferay using XBL

Thanks for your attention!

BRINGING “WARHOL” INTO PORTALS

Documents

Mashup-Aware Corporate Portals Sandy Pérez and Oscar Díaz ONEKIN Research Group University of the Basque Country San Sebastián (Spain) The 11th International