Portlets - AI, ML, VR & more

Seeing the dearth of free JSR 168 portlets, I have created a folder on the file section of portlets forum where one can upload portlets. There are already 15 portlets available in the repository contributed by different members. I request everyone to contribute portlets that can be the part of learning material and instant reuse. You can also create your own folder inside the free portlets folder. Your suggestions on 'free portlet repository' are welcome.

Studying existing source codes is the best method of learning new software technology. But it is difficult to find codes on Internet in case of portlets. In my previous post titled free portlets , I mentioned about few free resources on Internet where you can find portlets. But most of those resources are based on vendor dependant APIs and tools and hence not much useful in JSR 168 Portlet API learning. Here are few Sample Portlets that you can use for start learning portlet development - 1. http://www.geocities.com/lestermartin/portlet/portlet-dev-env.zip - 2 portlets (Hello World and Calculator) by Lester Martin 2. Notepad, Bookmark and Showtime Portlets - 3 sample portlets (Notepad, Bookmark and Showtime) from Sun Microsystems 3. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=91153 - 5 portlets (Google, Rss, Wizard, Upload, Mail) by POST: Portlet Open Source Trading Website I am sure that there are various example portlets scattered across the Internet. If yo...

I was looking for some introductory articles to give to our portlet trainees. But as usual, I found nothing really useful on Internet. Most of the good articles are vendor specific and not for JSR 168 portlet API. But I had to give something to them. I identified following articles that can be useful in click start learning of JSR 168 portlets - Understanding the Java Portlet Specification Developing to the Java Portlet Specification Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 1 Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 2 Seeing such a slack of portlet development articles, I have started working on "hands-on" type tutorial on portlet development that I'll post here soon. Till the time the second article i.e. " Developing to the Java Portlet Specification " can be the good starting point. Happy portletting.

The portal poll is still going on but I think that it's time to conclude. I am in touch with the industry and watching it closely for a long time but the results are somewhat surprising to me. I was not expecting that the open source portal servers would do that well. For me it is always difficult to interpret the data. But I'll try to do it with my limited understanding and almost no knowledge of statistics. I must make it clear that - My group and blogs may have audiences that may not be representing the real portal world. It may be biased towards one community or other. For example there is another poll going on titled "Do You Use Open Source Portal Servers". Around 68 percent users voted in favor i.e. they use open source portal servers. So one point is clear that my blogs/ groups have good readership/ usage among open source community. Though now-a-days I see more questions pertaining to commercial portals than open source portals. Now as the there ar...

While surfing, found following article - Creating a map portlet for Oracle Portal : "Creating a map portlet for Oracle Portal" UPDATE (Nov 20): Blog author has revised the post incorporating JSR 168. I received few emails regarding the need for JSR 168 portlets instead of oracle specific portlets. So it is the welcome modification. The new article is available at - http://www.orablogs.com/oragis/archives/000661.html

Portlets, like model-I JSPs, need some framework to keep code manageable. While saying framework, initially we are more concerned with the basic structure of the portlets. Though it can be argued that portlets are based on MVC pattern and less prone to code management problems. But due to single controller architecture, soon the controller codes start zooming and becomes highly unmanageable. At this stage we need some framework with some best practices to avoid code management problems. There are various methodologies available like State Pattern by IBM. Here in this article authors has suggested that portlets have three major functions - 1. Validate 2. Store Data 3. Prepare Request Based on above assumption, he has tried to standardize above three major processes of portlet development. Idea is new one and, in my opinion, can be useful for small to medium size portlet development. For detailed portlets (say more than 100 lines of code), in my opinion, we should go for some pro...

It is the one of the most frequently asked questions in portal world and I believe that no one has the right answer. There are various surveys and research reports but all telling different stories. One report is saying that IBM is leading the market and other-one is saying that Plumtree is the market leader. Most of the reports don't consider open source portal servers at all, I don't know why? In my opinion no research can be said complete without including the open source portal servers. Few of my fellow blog authors are of opinion that most of the research reports are fabricated & biased and vendors use them to promote their products only. In my opinion there is no easy method to find the right answer. I have created one survey for finding the answer of the same question. Right now, IBM Portal Server is leading and eXo is at the second spot. Please go and cast your vote. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlets/surveys?id=11907382 Note: The poll is on portlets yah...