JSR 286 Approved

You would be happy to know that the JSR 286 is approved and the final version should be available soon. By the time, you can have a look at final draft here. I am sure JSR286 will prove a big leap forward in success of Java Portals. I congratulate spec lead Stefan Hepper and all expert group members for the efforts and hard work.

Google Sites - Challenging Portals

Today I saw the announcement of "Google Sites" in my mailbox. I use Google Apps services for few of my domains. Just if you are not aware of what Google Apps is, Google Apps is a collaboration platform that can be subscribed by the companies instead any installation locally. In other words, it is kind of hosted portal for an enterprise. It provides quite a few important collaboration features like Email, Calendar, Task, Docs etc. Now the latest addition to this set is Google Sites.

Google Sites is a tool for quickly creating new websites and sharing information. Here is how Google defines it -
"Google Sites is the easiest way to make information accessible to people who need quick, up-to-date access. People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. " The more information can be found at Google Sites help at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/sites.html.

Now with the announcement of Google Sites, I believe that Google has started challenging Portal market. I think, Google is soon going to be the the free hosted sharepoint available to all. Though Google Apps is still at initial stages so we have some time where we see that Google started grabbing some portal market. I personally see that initially it will start affecting open source portals and small portal vendors before taking over biggies like Microsoft and IBM. We will soon see Google Apps catching fast in at least SME segment.

Where do you think Google Apps is heading? Do you also think that it is going to challenge portal market (especially collaborative portals)?

Portal Podcast

In the SharedInsights conference, me and my colleague Hari talk about key issues in portal arena like the need for portlets marketplace, lack of enterprise search and collaboration applications in the portal space etc.

Please check out the podcast here.

Portal Podcast

In the SharedInsights conference, me and my colleague Hari talk about key issues in portal areana like a need for portlets marketplace, lack of enterprise search and collaboration applications in the portal space etc.

Please check out the podcast here.

SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment Announced

SAP AG today announced that the Java EE 5-based SAP NetWeaver(R) Composition Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE), a next-generation set of standards-based and integrated composition tools, has been released to customers and partners for full production use. SAP NetWeaver CE, which is used for the development and deployment of composite applications, will also be available for a 30-day trial download on SAP Developer Network (sdn.sap.com) starting in May....................Read More

My Note: SAP's support for standards was always sloppy, especially JSR 168. So it is good to know that SAP is ahead in supporting standards this time.

iSeries/ AS400 Integration with Portals

iSeries integration with portals is one need that keep coming to us time to time. As always, IBM's product line is so confusing that it is very difficult to find out the product(s) that exactly fit to your requirement. On top of that, finding information on IBM products on web is not easy. As always their documents are so confusing and very difficult to find. So for the benefit of readers, I want to share some details on the products for iSeries (System i or AS/400) integration available from IBM. Following is the list of the products available for integration purpose -

1. iSeries Access Family components:

-- iSeries Access for Web

--The iSeries version of WebSphere Host Publisher

--WebSphere Host Access Transformation Server Limited Edition (HATS LE)

2. WebSphere Host On-Demand (a part of WebSphere Host Integration Solution)

3. IBM WebFacing Tool (part of WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSc))

4. Full functioned WebSphere Host Publisher packaged with the Host Integration Solution

5. Full functioned WebSphere Host Access Transformation Server (HATS) packaged with the WebSphere Host Integration Solution

IBM has vast information in it's (difficult-to-find) redbooks. I think these two redbooks are useful for this topic -

Redbook: iSeries Access for Web and HATS Limited Edition: V5R2 Hot Topics for IBM eServer iSeries Browser Users

Redbook: WebSphere Portal Express and Express Plus V5 for the IBM eServer iSeries Server

I hope this information will be useful for the readers.

If you aware about any source of similar information, please share with me.

Process and Integration Portals

After the collaborative portals and groupware on portals, it seems the time for vendors to focus more on integration portals and process portals. BPM and Integration is suppose to be a main feature for Portals. Though Process portals are being discussed for quite some time now, but we did not see any release which is more oriented towards middleware and hence provides the tightly integrated capabilities for enterprise application integration, business process integration and single sigh on. Oracle has came up with much focused efforts in this direction by announcing Oracle WebCenter Suite. This is a welcome efforts in that direction.

You can check the release announcement here.

You can also check an interesting demo for the Oracle WebCenter.