portals – technical aspects

Portals – Technical Aspects

Rajan Bhardvaj ( [email protected])

The World Bank

30 November 2005

30 Nov. 2005 Rajan Bhardvaj

Portal Technology - World Bank 2

Questions Posed

Technology Aspects (including choice of platform, examples of specific software used)

Portal architecture Description of specific functionalities provided by the portal Interaction between central portal and agency portals Interaction between central portal and local government

portals Integration of authentication systems (PKI, Single-Sign-On

etc) Integration of payment systems (organizational and technical

aspects) Which other functionalities are provided by the central portal

(e.g. content management, search, personalization)



What is a portal? A User Perspective At least three definitions

One place stop to get many services and information about a topic or area

A starting point or gateway to other resources Characteristics

Personalized space Types

General portal e.g. yahoo Specialized portal

e.g. purchasing portal Is amazon.com a portal?



Key Points (User Perspective)1. Unified information architecture

Hierarchy and organization of information Allows for a good frame of reference Think library and classification of books

2. A single user identity Across a portal, the user should be able to use

a single identity and password

3. Consistency of behavior and look and feel



Portal vs. Portal Software

Different perspectives: Portal as seen by user Portals can be built using many tools and

technologies including open source Yahoo, Google and many others are built on open

technologies Many typically do not use ‘portal product’ per se

Portals can be built using dedicated ‘Portal Products’ as well

More later..



Federation of Portals

Even from an information architecture perspective, a single portal may be just ‘too big’

Architecture may support a federation of portals: At least one entry point that provides a directory

and some services A set of sub-portals that provide specific services

or information



Federation Example

Audience Segmented Individual vs. Business vs. Employee

Geographically Distributed Country -> States -> City

Topically Distributed General

Health Taxes …

Combination Geographical and topical

Many other combinations as well



What would the portal do?

Examples: Directory of resources and links Information and knowledge

Agriculture best practices? Forms – Downloads/Submission?

E-Business Taxes due account statement File taxes electronically Obtain no-object certificates …



Examples – US Government Portal http://firstgov.gov/index.shtml



Before Technology Selection

DO develop requirements first PROCESS matters – how and who get

content in and how PILOT

Depending on the budget and scale DO a pilot project focused on functionality Start small if possible and iterate through the

technical infrastructure (i.e. be prepared to throw out first release)



Identity Management

A very critical element to make or break a portal Who are you?

Need to identify userse.g. US has social security Does the audience have a unique id?

THIS IS NOT A TECHNOLOGY PROBLEM Process for issuing and managing id’s and

password needs to be setup



Performance

Manage scale. # of users

Are you scaling to thousands, millions, 10’s of millions of users?

Traffic Static content vs. dynamic content (from a

database or other system) Different needs may indicate different

approaches



What Platform?

Questions: Buy vs. Build Open Source vs. Commercial Unix/Linux/Java vs. Windows/Microsoft ….



Product vs. Build

Why Product? Usual reasons: Time to market Capability Reliability Process and methodologies

Why Build? Can meet YOUR requirements May have some cost savings (note May)

May need both anyway. Generally, product preferred where feasible



Open Source vs. Commercial Software Open source is perfectly suitable for many,many

cases – Google and Yahoo run on open source. Can include end products or middleware

Middleware – Apache Tomcat, jBoss, Ruby or Rails… and many others

EndProducts – Plone, Alfresco, LifeRay… Commercial software may be needed for many

cases Integrating with back ends Out of the box solution Reliability and Support



Unix/Linux/Java vs. Windows/Microsoft Issue on two fronts:

What operating system? (Windows vs. Unix) What middleware stack?

Java vs. .net or other such as PHP/Ruby… Generally, more of a religious issue than

anything else Generally speaking, Linux/Java + Scripting

seems to have a little more momentum



Portal – Implementation Approach Define requirements, information architecture and look and feel

Ensure ‘business’ and not technical ownership But, keep it cross-functional and user focused

Define Success Factors Keep it simple

pick a couple of segments (citizen and small business for instance)

Stay away from personalization Stay low tech

Iterate Have an deliverable every six months with the first release

possibly taking a little more Have a feedback system and get usage statistic



What Not To Do

DO NOT: Focus on technology only

Portals are not about technology !! Implementation teams can get carried away by ‘cool’

features; users usually want simple things Have long delivery cycles

Setup 6 month releases and keep to that DO ensure QUICK wins

Ignore process Getting governance, agreements, processes can take a

LONG time



World Bank Example

Most Popular External – News, Projects Database, Research Internal - People Search and Projects About 10% of sites get 80% of traffic

What we did not do well Community Model

Sites are informational but do not connect people Somewhat supply driven rather than demand driven Search - improved marginally with a ‘low-tech’ appliance

solution Generally, took too long



Q. Portal Functionality

Refer to definition of portal Building a portal typically needs:

Application server / platform Search engine Content Management Collaboration/Communities

Discussion, blogs etc. Integration capabilities

Web services or others



Q. Interaction Between Portals Interaction between the central, agency and

local government portals needs further investigation

Important to focus on user behaviors and expectation and not on silos But, breaking of silos often difficult to do & can

lead to ownership issues Important to show agency or local government

leadership No simple answers



Q. Authentication, Single Sign On … Do have a single user identity (like social

security in the US) Preferable have a single userid/password Single Sign on really may not matter that

much PKI is complex to implement

Consider leaving to latter phases or implementing only where security needs are paramount



Q. Payment Systems…

Needs Discussion



Q & A

portals – technical aspects

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