Mentum Group jPorta
jPorta Web Site
Where Jetspeed is a full-feature strategy, jPorta is a much more
scaled-down solution. Which can be beneficial, depending on the
need. The documentation is well-designed, and describes the
basic functioning, including how to use the XML-based gadget
(portlet) registry, the layout manager and gadget tag usage
syntax (jPorta uses JSP custom tags for much of its
functioning). Installation instructions are only provided for
JBoss/Tomcat, although the documents say it will work with any
servlet 2.3 engine. I was able to easily deploy the application
WAR file on JRun4, but wasn't able to log in for unknown
reasons.
This last topic leads to Jeenius, the framework underlying
jPorta that handles a number of lower-end management functions,
much like the JavaServer Tags do. The most notable and deepest
use of Jeenius is to handle all of the security (e.g. users and
roles) and user profile information. Anyone interested in
customizing jPorta will inevitably need to at least understand
what Jeenius handles. For example, to troubleshoot my login
issue, I will need to see what is happening with Jeenius'
<jee:login> tag.
The good news is that both jPorta and Jeenius are fairly easy to
learn. Both use JSP extensively to handle all of the display,
relying on underlying custom tags to do the core of the work.
This means that customization is remarkably easy, even for
less-experienced J2EE developers. The code is very clean and the
tag API is intuitive. If you are looking for a simple solution
to display some simple servlet, HTML or JSP-based application as
gadgets, jPorta would be quite viable. A number of sample
gadgets are included that provide a good example for how to
develop portlet-type applications for jPorta.
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