4 Replies Latest reply on Jun 4, 2008 4:42 PM by ziggy25

    What exactly is the point of JBoss portal

    ziggy25

      Hi all,

      i am new to all JBOSS portal. I've been looking for a java/j2ee based web portal and came across jboss porta and a few others namely liferay, exo etc.

      What i am looking for is a web portal that i can use for an ordinary community website. This will include things like an article manager, a message board, a calendar, blogs and an image library.

      The site that i currently have is based on ASP but i would like to migrate this to a java based one so i started looking for a java based web portal.

      I do have some experience with Jakarta Tomcat and a servlet based java application that runs in the Tomcat container. When i started looking for the web portal i was expecting it to be a java application that would run within an application server e.g. Tomcat, Jboss etc.

      Reading about JBoss portal i am bit confused as to what exactly is the difference between the JBoss portal and a normal servlet container(App server). I would appreciate if someone can clarify these questions for me.

      1. What is the difference between Jboss portal and other servlet containers.
      2. Most of the literature i have seen about Jboss portal describes application deployed in the portal as portlets. Are these mini components that can be deployed to make up one application? For example am i right in thinking that i should be able to deploy a portlet for a message board and one for an image gallery? Can these be integrated to form one web application?
      3. When i have installed installed jboss portal, do i then have to find a portlet that will be the web portal or is the Jboss portal the actual web portal? I wasnt sure about this because the example in the quick start guide shown a portlet running within JBP.
      4. Are there example sites out there that use the Jboss portal
      5. Are portlets freely availbable?
      6. Is Jboss portal overkill for a middle sized website
      4.

        • 1. Re: What exactly is the point of JBoss portal
          ziggy25

          Oh and can a portlet written for a different portal (e.g. Liferay) run on any other portal like Jboss portal?

          • 2. Re: What exactly is the point of JBoss portal
            je.a.le

            I'm not an expert :-) but i can answer you from the point of view of someone in your situation, months back.

            1) it works ! ... not always the same with liferay or opencms
            I think everybody will agree with me : j2ee is entreprise, big projects oriented. So there're few opensource cms. for me jbossportal is the one with the few basic composant, but the most versative. Hard to get with, nice to to code with.
            2) portal (site) are made of pages. pages (kind of container/layout) are made of portlets. you add as much portlet you want on a page, according to a specific layout (easy to create new)
            portlet are king of mini site. You can customize them.
            3) --> 2)
            4) this is entreprise. for good or paranoia reasons, no.
            5)yes and no. some as opensource, others not (war). franky none fill my request so i use them as sample/backbone for my own. You probably have to code most of them.
            6) you need jboss, so a dedicated server, and at least 1Gb, 2Gb memory. If you (your client) can afford 400/600€ a year rental, dish php and jump on j2ee

            I think It's all matter of request : a simple "blog", use a joomla or whatever. Need a strong versative tool, use j2ee. What don't exist you probably can make it. But that mean you/your team can code in java.

            • 3. Re: What exactly is the point of JBoss portal
              claprun

              Thanks je.a.le for answering!
              Some more answers and precisions:

              1) A portal server is NOT a servlet container. A servlet containers can work with any kind of web application. A portal is a combination of a portlet container and a user facing web application. Portlets are special web applications designed to run in a portal environment to which they delegate many responsibilities. It is therefore easier to create a portal-based application based on portlet components that are integrated into a unified interface.

              2) If you are interested in portals, you should read the portlet specifications (Portlet 1.0 is JSR 168, Portlet 2.0 is JSR 286). They explain what a portlet is and how they interact with portals.

              3) Any portal server provides the glue and services that allow your portlets to focus on their responsibilities. In particular, any portal server will take care of rendering your portlets on pages, user identification, security, etc.

              4) There are many instances of sites running JBoss Portal. However, many of them are in an enterprise setting and not publicly available. You can see a live demo site running JBoss Portal at http://portal.demo.jboss.com/. Note also that jboss.org runs on JBoss Portal. :)

              5) Yes. However, it is very often the case that people develop their own portlets so that they can suit their needs better. Contributing such portlets back to the community is always encouraged! ;)

              6) Middle-sized website doesn't mean much. It's difficult to answer such a question abstractly as it will mostly depend on the portlets that are deployed.

              If you require more help, Red Hat offers training and consulting services.

              • 4. Re: What exactly is the point of JBoss portal
                ziggy25

                HI thanks for the response. I've actually decided to try out Jboss portal and see how i will like it. :)