Comparison of Oracle Portal to JASIG uPortal

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Comparison ofOracle Portal toJA-SIG uPortal
Steve Perry 05/02/02 Contact Jameson Watkins,
jwatkins_at_kumc.edu Note comparisons were made
using uPortal 2.0 and Oracle Portal 3.09
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Part I

• What is a Portal?

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Background

• Although portals are the most-desired user
  interface in IT, the concept of portals is one of
  the most misunderstood by enterprise customers
  and the most abused by vendors.
• Gene Phifer, Gartner Inc. Note
  IGG-01092002-02

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A Simple Definition

• Portals wrap an organizations documents and
  applications in a single web interface that
  provides distributed access, cross-platform
  usability, personalization, management, and
  security features.

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Larger List of Portal Features

• Categorization of content (taxonomy)
• Content search indexing
• Content management aggregation
• Personalization
• Robust application integration
• Development tools
• Redundancy, failover, load balancing
• Mobile/wireless support
• Single Sign-On
• Security

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Feature - Categorization of Content

• A portal should allow you to organize content and
  applications in different ways in order to meet
  the needs of various groups within your
  organization.

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Feature - Content Search Indexing

• A portal should provide or integrate with
  document index and search systems so that users
  can quickly navigate to the information they
  need.

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Feature - Content Management

• A portal should provide content authoring systems
  that allow non-technical staff to create content.
  It should control access to content to allow
  only authorized users access to document
  repositories.

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Feature - Personalization

• A portal should display different views of
  organizational data based upon user groups.
  Individual users should be able to further
  customize their view to only display the content
  they use most often.

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Feature - Application Integration

• A portal should provide a wrapper around existing
  web-based applications. Aspects of integration
  include support for single sign-on, inclusion of
  external web resources, support for web services,
  and portal preferences that carry over into the
  integrated application.

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Feature - Development Tools

• A portal product should provide robust,
  standards-based development tools that allow IT
  staff to integrate applications and extend portal
  functionality.

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Feature - Enterprise IT Functionality

• A portal should provide standard enterprise
  software functionality including redundancy,
  failover, load balancing, and backup.

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Feature - Mobile Wireless Support

• A portal should provide cross-platform
  functionality that allow users of different
  operating systems and web browsers to access the
  portal. This includes support for mobile phones
  and wireless PDAs.

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Feature - Single Sign-On

• A portal should integrate with or provide a
  single sign-on system. In other words, a portal
  should pull user information from a directory
  server such as LDAP, NDS, or Active Directory.

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Feature - Security

• A portal should provide robust authentication and
  authorization systems. Any integration with a
  single sign-on system should be secure and
  prevent the unencrypted transmission of user
  credentials across application domains.

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Problems with Portals

• There are no portal-specific standards for
  integration and data exchange
• Most enterprise software vendors are also portal
  vendors. Instead of creating integration tools,
  they market their own portal product (Oracle,
  PeopleSoft, Blackboard, etc.)
• No portal product works straight out of the box
  and most require an extremely high level of skill
  to customize.
• The goal of portals is unification of data and
  processes until integration becomes a higher
  priority, this ambition will not be fully
  realized.

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Part I - Summary

• Portals
• wrap applications in portlets or channels to
  integrate them into a unified web framework
• organize and manage static web content
• allow a user to customize her view of the
  information resources in the organization
• provide a framework for web applications with
  features like integrated security and single
  sign-on
• are not as easy to integrate and deploy as
  marketing material would have you believe

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Part II

• Deploying a Portal at KUMC

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Tasks

• Integrate portal authentication / single sign-on
  system with NDS
• Import group information into the portal
• Create customized portal layouts for different
  groups at KUMC (students, faculty, staff, etc.)
• Create, import, or customize channels or portlets
  to display KUMC static data (portions of KUMC web
  site)
• Integrate custom KUMC web applications with the
  portal (phone book, user password change, HR
  forms, etc.)
• Integrate 3rd party applications (PeopleSoft,
  Data Warehouse, GroupWise, course management
  system, etc.)

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Challenges

• Integration with NDS is essential our policy
  that NDS require SSL connections makes
  integration with it more challenging
• Finding a portal that can eventually support most
  or all of our systems (PeopleSoft, data
  warehouse, GroupWise, course management system)
  will be a real challenge due to the lack of
  portal standards
• A portal aggregates content and applications. In
  order to develop one different groups (Internet
  Development, Data Integration, Networking, Net
  Learning) will have to work together very
  closely.

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Part III

• Introduction to uPortal

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What is uPortal

• Developed under JA-SIG (Java in Administration
  Special Interest Group) by institutions of
  higher-education including Princeton, Yale, and
  University of Delaware
• An open source, open standards effort built upon
  Java, XML, XSL, JSP, J2EE, and JDBC
• More of a framework for building custom portals
  than a proper portal

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uPortal Design Philosophy

• Enable universities to rapidly incorporate their
  web-based content into a single
  point-of-presence. Provide the ability for
  universities to integrate web-based applications
  through an open Java framework built on accepted
  web standards.

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uPortal Architecture
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uPortal Interface

• For an average user, uPortal has two types of
  screens
• Portal view Shows a users customized view of
  the portal including layout regions, banner,
  tabs, channels and channel controls
• Maximized channel view Shows the currently
  selected channel maximized so it occupies the
  entire browser

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uPortal Interface
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Adding Content to uPortal

• In uPortal all content must be encapsulated in a
  channel. Out of the box, uPortal supports
• Image
• Inline Frame
• RSS (Rich Site Summary)
• Simple XML Transformation
• WebProxy

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Adding Applications to uPortal

• If you need to add more than content to uPortal
  you can
• Create a Custom Java channel that is loaded into
  the uPortal framework on the application server
• Create a Java Servlet that outputs XML and
  install it as an XML channel

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uPortal Integration Options

• To integrate an existing web-based application
  into uPortal
• If the application outputs XHTML, integrate it as
  a Web-Proxy channel
• If the application outputs XML, integrate it as
  an XML channel
• For custom/complete integration, write a Java
  wrapper around the application that calls methods
  on the uPortal framework

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3rd Party Channels

• There are at least 30 3rd party channels
  available for uPortal.
• Free channels can be acquired from JA-SIG
• Commercial channels can be purchased from
  Interactive Business Solutions (IBS)

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Authentication Authorization in uPortal

• Authentication is performed against an LDAP
  server or database
• Channels can benefit from single sign-on if
  designed to use uPortals security framework
• Basic permissions include
• Subscribe to/Execute channel
• Modify layout
• Administer channels

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uPortal Strengths

• Free
• Default user interface is very intuitive
• Strong support for industry standard web and
  distributed application technologies (J2EE, XML,
  XSL)
• Built-in support for RDS/RSS channels
• Open source code allows more options for
  customization and integration
• Support for multiple databases, application
  servers, and web servers
• User interface is very easy to customize

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More uPortal Strengths

• Expert developer community (you can talk directly
  to the original developers)
• Vendor independent single sign-on
• Quick personalization by user or group
• Can be wrapped in SSL (with a web-proxy)
• Can be made to support mobile and wireless
  browsers as well as new desktop browsers
• Is already in use at many universities

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uPortal Weaknesses

• Open source products dont have the same support
  options as commercial software (though one
  consulting firm close to uPortal offers support
  plan)
• Differences in deployment platforms make it hard
  to evaluate uPortals scalability
• Developers require a very high level of expertise
  in Java, XML, XSL, SQL, and HTML
• Redundancy, failover and backup capabilities are
  not integrated with uPortal (but can be
  configured by a DBA and sysadmin)

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Part III - Summary

• uPortal
• is open standards and open source. This makes it
  maximally flexible in terms of customization and
  integration but also requires a high level of
  developer expertise
• limited options for vendor support
• can be very inexpensive depending upon deployment
  specifics
• is already in use by a many universities with
  more in planning stages

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Part IV

• Introduction to Oracle Portal

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What is Oracle Portal

• Developed by Oracle to offer a portal product
  that leverages their 9i Application Server and 9i
  Database products
• Offers both traditional portal and portal
  framework features

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Oracle Portal Design Philosophy

• Enable owners of the Oracle database product to
  efficiently leverage their knowledge of Oracle
  technologies into a single portal that provides
  customizable access to resources in the Oracle
  database as well as traditional web-based
  applications

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Oracle Portal Architecture
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Oracle Portal Interface

• For an average user, Oracle Portal has two types
  of screens
• Page view Shows a users customized view of the
  portal including layout regions, banner, tabs,
  and portlets. Might also include links to
  sub-pages.
• Folder view Shows a shared piece of content
  called a folder. Folders are mainly for
  displaying static content but can also include
  portlets

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Oracle Portal Interface
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Adding Content to Oracle Portal

• Except for when working with Folders, all Oracle
  Portal content must be encapsulated in a portlet.
• Oracle Portal contains several example portlets
  that can be extended to incorporate basic HTML
  and XML content.

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Adding Application to Oracle Portal

• If you need to add more than content to Oracle
  Portal you can
• Pull simple data from the Oracle Database by
  creating PL/SQL portlets
• Create custom Java portlets as JSP, Servlets or
  classes using the PDK

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3rd Party Portlets

• There are hundreds of commercial 3rd party
  portlets available for Oracle Portal
• The Content section of the Portal Catalog on the
  Oracle Portal Studio site includes many portlet
  service and content providers
• These portlets are 3rd party commercial software
  products with their own pricing and licensing
  terms.

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Authentication Authorization in Oracle Portal

• Authentication is handled by the Login Server and
  is part of the single sign-on capabilities of
  Oracle Portal
• The Login Server can be configured to use LDAP as
  a user data repository (originally only Oracle
  Internet Directory was supported, but there is a
  new module on the OTN site)
• Documentation does not mention SSL LDAP
  connections

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Oracle Portal Strengths

• Many technical support options exist
• The OTN and Portal Studio websites provide
  developers with a great deal of documentation and
  access to developer message boards
• Its easy to share distributed applications
  across instances of the Oracle Portal
• Strong support for industry standard web and
  distributed application technologies through the
  Portlet Development Kit (PDK-Java)
• Some Oracle database management tasks can be
  performed through the portal

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More Oracle Portal Strengths

• Oracle Reports can easily be displayed as
  portlets
• Support for 3rd party enterprise content
  management systems including Interwoven and
  FatWires Update Engine
• If Oracle Portal continues to gain in market
  share, more 3rd party integration options could
  be developed (for instance WebCTs Vista product
  could be expanded to support Portal)

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Oracle Portal Weaknesses

• Authentication system may not be able to connect
  to an LDAP server via SSL
• The difference between pages and folders is very
  confusing to developers and end-users.
• The customization interface used by users to
  change their layout is very confusing
• Content management and page design/layout
  features are very limited. For any real
  deployment, page designs will have to be created
  from scratch in PL/SQL

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More Oracle Portal Weaknesses

• It may be difficult to modify the standard
  login/logout/session timeout screens
• Initial setup of the default layout, default
  portlet set, and authentication systems will
  require extensive modification to the
  out-of-the-box system
• Simple PL/SQL cannot really be used by most end
  users to generate reports because even the simple
  web interface requires a deep understanding of
  the database schema and a familiarity with Oracle

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Suggestions for a KUMC Oracle Portal deployment

• KUMC should consider creating simple reports as
  standard JSPs that could be used outside of the
  portal
• Custom KUMC portlets should be served from a
  single provider to avoid overhead
• IDU staff will need training in Oracle database
  administration as well as PL/SQL development
• Avoid the use of folders when designing portal
  layouts
• Restrict end-users from accessing page design
  features (not page layout)

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Part IV - Summary

• Oracle Portal
• is exceptionally powerful
• is less flexible than uPortal but has many more
  features and can make some Oracle related tasks
  easier
• presents the promise of easy integration with
  some 3rd party software systems (for a price)
• is difficult to customize and configure and
  suffers from some usability issues
• may have problems integrating with NDS

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Part V

• Comparison of uPortal and Oracle Portal Features
• (See spreadsheet)

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More Information

• uPortal
• http//www.ja-sig.org/portal
• http//my.kumc.edu
• Oracle Portal
• http//www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/ias/portal/index.h
  tml?consideration.html
• http//portalstudio.oracle.com