Enterprise Integration

[nm-156]

Is it possible to expose existing, unrelated J2EE apps that are running on a JBoss AS on separate portal windows? i.e.) Is it possible to set up a dashboard to have app 1 accessible on tab 1, app 2 accessible on tab 2, etc?

Thank you.

[nm-156]

Perhaps there isn't a straight answer to my question. I am new to portals, so I have been trying to research what is practical in terms of leveraging existing applications through a portal. I found these two articles. It is interesting that (according to the author) JBoss is listed as a likely misfit for enterprise integration. I know the article is dated 2006, so I'd be happy to read any rebuttals/opinions about the article. The second article discusses some considerations when porting J2EE apps to a portal.

http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/147-Portal-Marketplace

http://www.developer.com/java/ent/article.php/10933_3346861_1

[theute]

For some reason (Because we are not a CMS ? Because they didn't understand what we are doing ? Becaus they never talked to us) CMSwatch doesn't like us...

it's easy to put a product in "misfit" with no explanation.

We can easily integrate with existing identity servers (See several LDAP implementation tested, Active Directory, any Hibernate supported database and successfull integration of legacy identity services by customers). Now we are also starting out of the box support for SSO frameworks (OpenSSO, JOSSO, CAS...)

We bundle a JSR-168 portlet container, we bundle a basic CMS, Alfresco integrates with us...

So enterprise Integration is vast...

[soshah]

To add to Thomas' comment and CMS Watch's evaluation.

Their argument on Enterprise Integration clearly shows they have no idea about features of JBoss Portal.

Here is a technical rebuttal to their argument:

Enterprise Application Integration combines separate applications into a co-operating federation of applications.

JBoss Portal provides a JSR-168 portlet container which clearly gives you the tool that you need to expose your J2EE applications as portlets and federate them like mentioned above. The Identity Management Module's pluggability and SSO integration helps federate the security aspect of these applications as well.

Portals that support complex workflows depend upon queuing services, identity management (particularly for role management), and business rule engines to coordinate multi-step processing.

JBoss Portal integrates well with the JBoss JEMS stack which provides various tools for

workflow/business rules - JBPM and Drools. In fact the CMS workflow is built using JBPM
Identity Management - JBoss Portal's pluggable Identity Module and support of SSO frameworks

Thanks

[nm-156]

Thanks for replying, Thomas and Sohil.

Thomas:

Yes, I agree that the two word categorization in the article is very narrow. Again, I would reiterate that I am new to portals, and I am just trying to conduct some research to find out what will be involved in federating our legacy J2EE apps through the JBoss portal.

Sohil says:

JBoss Portal provides a JSR-168 portlet container which clearly gives you the tool that you need to expose your J2EE applications as portlets and federate them like mentioned above. The Identity Management Module's pluggability and SSO integration helps federate the security aspect of these applications as well.

From what I have been able to gather so far, bridges and a certain amount of re-tooling are required to expose legacy J2EE apps through JBoss portal. Our J2EE apps are currently running on a JBoss AS.

Thanks.

[soshah]

From what I have been able to gather so far, bridges and a certain amount of re-tooling are required to expose legacy J2EE apps through JBoss portal. Our J2EE apps are currently running on a JBoss AS.

You are correct. applications have to be integrated into the JSR-168 container using these techniques. However, that should be the case with all Portals in general.

Have you heard of any other proprietary mechanism supported by other Portal vendors?

If there is we would benefit to know about it.

Thanks

[theute]

I took few minutes to read the second article which makes lot of sense.

The clean path is to rewrite your VIew layer (or use a bridge, if your apps are JSF apps it would help a lot).

The other option is web-clipping, we are looking at having something like this out of the box but the current open source implementation doesn't seem to satisfy our needs.

There is a proprietary solution for web clipping (for any portlet container), I forgot the name

[bvogt]

For a first step (or low budget integration, which is a good argument for business deciders), you may think of a simple URL integration within an iframe.

Of course, this requires that the application to be integrated is already integrated in some kind of central identity management (e.g. header based authentication) and - for user acceptance - is able to reduce its layout to fit into the portals look & feel.

We have done this even for SAP CRM and SAP BW funktionality - for a smooth migration from the previously used SAP NetWeaver WebAS and -portal.