Apache Jetspeed
Jetspeed Web Site at Apache Jakarta
If you have done any research into J2EE portal application,
Jetspeed is sure to turn up. A part of the Apache Jakarta
project (Apache's J2EE segment), Jetspeed has been around since
1999 and members of the Jetspeed project are active participants
in the JSR-168 portlet API specifications (other participants
include IBM, BEA Systems, Borland and Epicentric). All of these
factors make Jetspeed one of the better options.
Jetspeed uses XML extensively for display and back-end
functionality. This includes simple use of RSS feeds and XML
data into portlets and WAP cell phone site delivery.
Additionally, Portal Structure Markup Language (PSML) is used to
store portal-specific information including styles,
personalization information and portlet registries.
The documentation is fairly good overall - improved
significantly with a tutorial for the 1.4b3 release.
Additionally, FAQ's, sample sites, Javadocs and other
information is readily available via the Jetspeed home page.
Beyond basic user storage and preference settings and portlet
integration, Jetspeed offers a number of nice features. The
administrative interface is intuitive. Content can be syndicated
and syndicated content can be accessed as portlets. It will be
standardized on the portlet specification, enabling absorption
of third-party portlet applications. Currently, numerous types
of applications can be integrated as portlets including: RSS,
JSP, servlets, external Web page, XSL, Velocity, a database
browser and more. Data can be integrated with Avantgo. It is
also highly portable between J2EE servers using the JDK 1.2 and
Servlet 2.2 specifications.
The only weakness I could find with Jetspeed was that its not
very customizable. Customizing Jetspeed requires not only
knowledge of J2EE programming concepts, but also the Turbine application framework. This isn't
inherently a weakness. Building applications on top of existing
frameworks is laudable and is a good development strategy.
However, not knowing Turbine will add to the learning curve of
understanding how Jetspeed works. Note also, that some templates
are written using the Velocity template engine (Turbine has
Velocity built in).
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