Sue Vickers

Enterprise portals provide a single interface to aggregated and componentized information. They significantly reduce the navigational issues inherent with Web sites and make it easier to publish information from disparate sources. The basic building blocks of enterprise portals are portlets, which are reusable, personalized Web components displaying content from various data sources. One data source, XML, has become a widely used tool in enterprise portals. The work needed to integrate XML with a portal is often considered a highly technical and time-consuming task. For example, to publish XML into a portal, developers usually think that programming is their only option. They go through the entire process of using Beans, compiling XML Schemas, and processing and binding XML instance documents. Developers go through this process without considering the level of comp... (more)

Portal Standards

As demonstrated by the emergence of multiple portal initiatives within organizations today, the benefits of enterprise portals are clearly understood. It's common to see several enterprise portal platforms deployed throughout an organization. However, many companies are attempting to standardize on one portal framework but are challenged with integrating disparate portal instances. Each portal instance requires developers, partners, system integrators, and independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop portlets using proprietary application program interfaces (APIs) that suppor... (more)