What I found to be interesting in my research of portals and portlets are around where this technology will be in the future. The basis around this curiosity came from the article here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4912: “The future of portals is mashups, SOA, more aggregation”.
When I first started reading this the question that came to my mind is: “Will mashups replace portlets within a Portal?” We discussed mashups a couple of weeks ago and one of the questions posed at that time was will mashups replace ERP? (http://sysintteam.blogspot.com/2009/10/can-mashups-replace-erp-enterprise.html). After reading more about the topic of the future of portals I saw that really what the blog was proposing was that in the future mashups will be used to actually aggregate multiple portals together. Imagine being able to use a portlet within Google within your own company’s enterprise portal. I actually found an example here (http://blogs.sun.com/javacapsfieldtech/entry/healthcare_
facility_mashup_portlet_with) where a company is looking to use what is called a ‘mashup portlet’ to leverage Google maps to show facility locations. Google actually provides their APIs at an enterprise support level, of course with the purchase of a license, so that companies can integrate a solution which is already proven to be some of the most popular tools (http://www.google.com/options) for personal and professional activities. In addition to the many advantages that this will offer companies there are also some concerns. Personally I think that one of the biggest concerns would be around security. Due to the fact that the different tools provided by Google are so popular, there is a very large audience that has ‘interest’ in them. With the API being available to virtually anyone this can pose to be a security threat to any company leveraging the tools provided by Google. However for one to be able to exploit the Google API they would have to first get past the security of the company’s Enterprise Portal. Nonetheless security should still be an important point considered when integrating third-party applications within a portal.
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Mo, I think you have done a decent work in "research". One aspect of the research is asking questions. It's important you can ask yourself questions, then clarify and define your questions, and then explore with your questions in mind, and in the end you find the answer to your question. In this exploratary process you will learn a lot. Hope you have enjoyed this process.
ReplyDeleteCompliments to Peter and Mo for an excellent discussion of Portals and Portlets. While it is true that IT is prone to a glut of buzzwords, Peter and Mo quickly moved past them to delve into this important topic. This was the first time I had heard of the Portlet Specifications (JSR 168 & 286), and found their coverage to be quite thorough, given the time constraints. Concluding with a brief discussion of the future of Portlets provided excellent examples of how these topics are constantly being redefined.
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