Enterprise Portals at Non-Enterprise Prices (free, that is)
The Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) has certainly become one
of the major enterprise software categories of the day. While
the definition varies somewhat from vendor to vendor, a portal
is basically a dynamic Web site containing multiple modules
(often called portlets or gadgets or other goofy names), the
display of which can be customized by each user. Portals contain
a user security methodology, ideally including a single sign-on
so users can log in to all of the modules at once.
If you need a real-world example, think of the application
behind My
Yahoo!. The difference would be that in most enterprise
environments, corporations set up portals to enable their
partners, customers or vendors to log in and view critical
information about their company. This can include information
from corporate databases and other back office software, e-
commerce applications, other Web-enabled applications and an
unlimited amount of data from content management systems,
syndication sources and more.
Numerous software vendors have portal solutions available. At
the high end, Plumtree, IBM, SAP, BEA and other similar
solutions have unbelievably high license fees. Add in the costs
of integration and implementing and EIP solution can easily run
up in the million dollar figures. Other companies, including
Microsoft and Sybase offer solutions with a lower license fee.
The reality is that many companies don't need everything these
solutions offer. Most, if not all, high-end solutions have
application integration features that allow for (relatively)
simple integration with ERP and other back office solutions,
truly a key factor for Fortune 1000 companies, as well as
built-in application servers and content management solutions.
For many small-to-medium enterprise companies, this is way
more than is needed or even desired.
This is where the solutions reviewed below really shine (in
varying degrees). Most of these solutions offer a skeletal form
of what would be expected in an EIP solution, but are quite
sufficient for a J2EE developer to begin their portal
development process and save a significant amount of coding time
working with underlying processes, such as authentication and
personalization.
Enterprise Portals Key Review Factors
There are quite a few open source and free EIP solutions
available, but many fewer in the J2EE world, though in many
ways J2EE is a natural fit for portals. In addition to the
helpful API's for data integration (such as Java DataBase
Connectivity [JDBC], Java Connector Architecture [JCA] and Java
Naming Directory Interface [JNDI]), tremendous strides are being
made to make it even better: a portlet API is currently under
review (see JSR-168
specs) and Java's Web Services implementation are both great
examples of this.
Though what every company is looking for in a portal solution is
variable, I reviewed these based on the following items:
- Installation and setup: How easy was it to
install? What J2EE application servers are supported?
- Documentation: Was there documentation? Of
what quality?
- "Out of the (proverbial) box"
features: What features come with the portal without
requiring additional programming? How good are the
implementations? Anything expected that isn't there?
- Ease of customization: If changes are
required, how difficult is it to get into the code and make
them?
- Additional bonus features: Does the portal
have any features beyond authentication and site
customization?
- Portlet API: How difficult is it to create
or modify applications to be used as modules? What types of
portlets can be used?
These 4 portal solutions seemed the best for review purposes:
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