Jim Farmer, JA-SIG Collaborative20 June 2002

EUNIS 2002, Porto, Portugal

Portals, uPortal, and Web Services

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IGPublisher’s note

This short presentation was originally scheduled as part of Art Pasquinelli’s panel. Because of travel interruptions, this presentation was not made at the conference.

Supplementary material follows the end of the presentation.

instructional media + magic, inc.

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Administrative

Instruction

Library

Research

A Student’s Web World

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IGStudents expectations shaped by...

• Their experience with e-government

• Their use of financial services portals

• Their use of the Internet

• Their life in a “real-time, information rich” environment

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IGStudents now expect...

• Service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

• Complete information froma single source

• Delivery by Web, e-mail, telephone, and facsimile, and, wireless devices• response time of 15 seconds for

telephone, 10 seconds for Web, and 2 hours for e-mail and facsimile

• access to a complete transaction history

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IGWhy are portals important?

• Makes knowledge workers more productive

• Preferred by users• Market share• University identity

• A viable architecture for information services• Integration platform• Improved services• Lower costs

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IGA Student Portal

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IGTypes of portals

• Enterprise [integration]• Knowledge/document management• Collaboration and messaging• Front end to application servers

Jim Rapoza, “Enterprise value of portals is clear,” eWeek, September 13, 2001

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IGRequired capabilities

Type of Portal JSP Chat & Mail

ContentClassificationand Search

WebServices

Enterprise

Collaboration

Knowledgemanagement

Front end

University

? ? ?

? ? ?

? ? ?

? ? ? ?

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IGAvailable services

Type of Portal Dir

ecto

ryA

uth

enti

cati

onR

oles

Gro

ups

Wal

let

Auth

oriz

atio

ne-

mai

l an

d c

hat

Web

Ser

vice

sX

ML,

SO

AP,

UD

DI

Wor

kflow

Cal

endar

ing

Annou

nce

men

ts

Enterprise X ? ? ? ? ?

Collaboration ? ? ? X ? X X ? ?

Knowledgemanagement

? X ? X ? ?

Front end ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

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IGRequired authentication

Type of Portal Local Remote Anonymous

Enterprise ? X

Collaboration ? X

Knowledgemanagement

?

Front end ? X

University

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IGWhat is uPortal?

• Enterprise, horizontal portal• Framework for presenting aggregated

content (channels)• Personalization• Role-based access control• Open source, collaborative effort• Java web application

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IGJA-SIG

• Java In AdministrationSpecial Interest Group• www.jasig.org

• Conferences biannually• Clearing house

• https://www.mis4.udel.edu/JasigCH/

• Collaborative projects

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IGuPortal Interfaces

• Authentication• Proving your identity

• Authorization• Deciding what you can access

• Directory services• Such as populating EduPerson

• User preferences• Profiles, structure, themes, skins

• Channel information• Availability and configuration

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IGWhat is a Channel?

• Displays content • XML feeds

• Rich Site Summary (RSS)• Web services

• Legacy systems

• Interactive applications• Bookmarks• Email, chat, list serves

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IGThe Meteor channel

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IGFlexible Layouts

• Structures• Tab / column• Tree / column

• Themes• Multi-column• Multi-row

• Skins

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IGMultiple Target Devices

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IG XML

Stylesheet

XHTML: Web Browser

WML: Cell Phone

HTML: PDA

XSLTProcessor

Content Transformation

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IGTab / Column Layout

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IGTree / Column Layout

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IGWhat’s new in 2.0?

• Abstraction of layout• Structure/theme transformations• Standard channel events• Standard CSS classes• More flexible publish/subscribe• User profile management• JNDI lookup service• WebProxy channel

Web services as an architecture

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IGA Web service is

• XML business messages• using ebXML/SOAP compliant

data transport• rendered using XSL transformations• for a remotely authenticated user

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IGWeb services architecture is

• XML “tagged” data contenteXtensible Markup Language

• ebXML/SOAP data transportSimple Object Access Protocol

• XSL transformations for presentationeXtensible stylesheet language

and now• UDDI/WSDL directory services

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration, and Web Services Description Language

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IGValue of Web services technology

Open standards Web service projects are taking one-fourth the time and costing one-fifth comparable projects using traditional technology. Performance is 2 to 10 times better than expected.• HFC Bank - IFX credit card application using XML,

SOAP and XSLT• Deutsche Bank Bauspar - FixML security

transaction integration using XML messages and XSL transformations

• Hypo Vereinsbank - Integration

Based on presentations at the XSLT [Invitational] Conference

Oxford, University, April 8-9, 2001

The Meteor Channel, an example of Web services

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IGAs implemented ...

Web ServicesSecure HTML

MeteorSecure XML

StandardBrowserStandardBrowser uPortaluPortal

MeteorSOAP

MeteorSOAP

MeteorSOAP

MeteorSOAP

DatabaseDatabase

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IGData from multiple sources, locations

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IGMeteor Channel in the uPortal

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IGWeb services in uPortal

• WSRP channel-level support• SOAP in application channels

Soon as portal service• UDDI pilot test late summer 2002• WS-Security implementation planned

The end

jim farmerjxf@immagic.com

Web services as an architecture

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IGDepartment of Education standards

MeteorSFA

Announced

Announced[March 2001]

Expected

UMLXMLJava

SOAP XML-RPCUDDI/WSDL

SAML

Proposed, with convergence

[Feb 2000]

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IGIs Web technology important?

• Feb 1993 - The University of Illinois releases the Mosaic browser

• Oct 1995 - The word e-commerce enters the vocabulary

• Feb 2000 - ED/SFA announces UML, XML, Java standards

• Sep 2000 - IBM announces “Web services”, a new architecture

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IGConvergence: Business Messages

June 2000 MayDecember

CommonLine XML [ESC]

LoanML [IFX]

Common Record [SFA]

CommonLine R5 [ NCHELP ESC]

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IGConvergence: Data Transport

September 2000 AprilMarch

SOAP [NCHELP ESC]

SOAP [SFA]

ebXML [PESC]

“Simple SOAP” [Meteor]

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IGConvergence: Authentication

December 2000 JuneMarch

SFA [NCS Proprietary]

SAML [Oasis]

S2ML [Netegrity]

AuthML [Securant]

XTASS [VeriSign]

Internet 2 [Shibboleth]

The Meteor Channel, an example of Web services

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IGMeteor in a nutshell…

Lender

XML

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IGDiagram of Meteor Concept

Web ServicesHTML

MeteorXML

StudentStudent Access Provider Access Provider Data Provider Data Provider

Architecture of uPortal

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IGChannel

• Elementary unit of presentation, defined by the IChannel interface

IChannel

Set Runtime Data ()

User InteractionExternal Information

Render XML ()

Channel Content(Presentation)

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IGFramework Organization

uPortal Framework

User Interaction Presentation

Channel Channel Channel

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IGUser Layout

• User Layout is an abstract structure defining the overall content available to the user

• userLayout is a tree structure consisting of “folders” and “channels”, the later always being the leaf nodes

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IGUser Layout

C h an n e l C h an n e l C h an n e l

C h an n e l

F o ld er

F o ld er C h an n e l

F o ld er

C h an n e l

F o ld er

F o ld er

C h an n e l C h an n e l

F o ld er

U se r La yo u t

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IGStructure Transformation

C h an n e l C h an n e l C h an n e l

C h an n e l

F o ld er

F o ld er C h an n e l

F o ld er

C h an n e l

F o ld er

F o ld er

C h an n e l C h an n e l

F o ld er

U se r La yo u t

Channel Channel Channel Channel

Column Channel

Tab

Channel

Tab

Channel Channel

Tab

User Layout

Column

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IGTheme Transformation

C h an n e lD ic tio n a ry.com

C o lu m n

C h an n e lB o o km a rks

C h an n e lC a rto on

C o lu m n

T abJ im S m ith

C h an n e l

T abF in a n cia l A id

C h an n e l C h an n e l

T abL ib ra ry

U se r La yo u t

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IGCompiling the Presentation

Structuretransformation

Themetransformation

userLayout

structuredLayout

HTML, WML VoiceML...

XSLT

XSLT

setRuntimeData()

renderXML()

Channels

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IGArchitectural Features

• Extensive user customization• Inter-channel communications• Channel services• Normalized database schema• Profiles (multiple device management)• Layout-specific preferences channels• JNDI backbone

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IGChannel Services

• Services provide common functionality to the channels• Logging facility• “Password wallet”• File sharing, printing, mail, calendar• Channel synchronization

• JNDI access

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IGInter-channel communication

• Channel discovery• How to find a channel ? Need channel

instance ID.• Functional names

• Direct interaction• Channel access objects• Channel-bound public JNDI subtrees

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IGDatabase backing

• Storage interfaces• User layout, profiles, preferences,

stylesheet descriptions• Channel registry

• Normalized DB schema• Generic and Oracle implementations

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IGUser Profiles

• Profile defines:• Structure/Theme stylesheets• A set of user preferences• User layout

• System vs. User profiles• Browser-specific preferences

• User-Agent ID maps to a profile

• Initial profile mapping

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IGUser preferences

• Portal=rendering+customization• User Preferences Channel• Swappable layout and preference

management modules• Profile management module• Tab-column specific UP module• Skin Selection

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IGUser Preferences

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IGPublish/Subscribe

• Channel publishing document• Channel parameters

• Default values• Modification permissions• Descriptions

• Publish/Subscribe steps• Step sequence• Instructions, help

• Flexible channel publishing

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IGChannel Types

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IGChannel Settings

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IGChannel Controls

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IGChannel Classification

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IGChannel Authorization: Roles

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IGIn progress

• Performance optimization• Caching/Pooling optimizations• Setup optimization

• Authorization checks• User Identification (EduPerson)• Tree layout UP module• More content !