Book Image

IBM Websphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud

Book Image

IBM Websphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud

Overview of this book

IBM WebSphere® Portal is a cost- effective, scalable, and proven solution for the portal enterprise space. Given the depth and the breadth of WebSphere Portal and the challenges of developing a portal project, you need a book that covers all the nuances of the entire portal project lifecycle. This book accomplishes just that. In this book, we cover topics that range from portal assessment, governance, and architecture, to design and development. These topics are covered not only within these traditional areas, but also within the cloud environment context. Keeping both contexts in mind, several chapters are dedicated to portal and portlet testing, troubleshooting, performance monitoring, best practices, and tuning. The cloud option is also analyzed and discussed for hosting, developing, and publishing portal applications. We also cover Web Experience Factory (WEF) as the tool of choice for portlet development. We take you from the introduction to the development of advanced portlets in an intuitive and efficient manner. We cover not only common topics, such as builders, models, and user interface development, but also advanced topics, such as Dojo builders, Ajax techniques, and WEF performance. Within the WEF space, we cover other topics, which have never been covered before by any other competing book. You will learn how to develop multichannel applications, including web mobile applications and you will learn about the model types available for portlet development, including when and how to utilize them. We also present and discuss numerous aspects and facets of implementing a WEF project and what it takes to successfully deliver them. The richness and the profundity of the topics combined with an intuitive and well-structured presentation of the chapters will provide you with all the information you need to master your skills with the IBM WebSphere Portal project lifecycle and Web Experience Factory.

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IBM Websphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud
Sep, 2012 | 474 pages
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Table of Contents (27 chapters)
IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud
IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud
Credits
Credits
Foreword
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Portal Assessment
Portal Assessment
IBM WebSphere Portal (WP), IBM Web Experience Factory (WEF), and the cloud
SaaS/IaaS/PaaS cloud engagement models
Getting started—case study
Cloud use cases applied
Portal and Cloudonomics sense
Summary
2
Portal Governance: Adopting the Mantra of Business Performance through IT Execution
Portal Governance: Adopting the Mantra of Business Performance through IT Execution
Social and technical evolution
Five steps to governance
Portal governance — best practices
Value interests
Summary
3
Portal Requirements Engineering
Portal Requirements Engineering
The discipline of requirements and requirements as a discipline
Summary
4
Portal Architecture: Analysis and Design
Portal Architecture: Analysis and Design
Cloud architectural model
Portal architectural decisions
Information architecture — wireframes and storyboards
Enterprise reference architecture — simplifying complexity with DataPower and all handlers
A2Z banking reference and portal application architecture
A2Z call center reference and portal application architecture
Cloud as the fabric for resilient architecture
Architecting for nonfunctional requirements
Summary
5
Portal Golden and Cloud Architecture
Portal Golden and Cloud Architecture
Reusable architecture assets and IBM Portal Accelerators
Cloud execution environment and architectural model for cloud computing — IBM cloud reference architecture
Highly available portal golden and SOA reference architecture
Virtual portals, realms, and cluster partitioning
Portal collaboration, pervasive, and voice runtime architectures
Portal security architecture
Portal architecture and performance modeling — cloud and traditional paradigms
Portal operational model and workload analysis
IBM lab tools — mainframe and distributed
Commercial solutions and tools — mainframe and distributed
Cloud capacity planning — IBM SmartCloud Monthly Cost Estimator
Cloud capacity planning — Amazon Monthly Calculator
Test architecture and test data governance
Summary
6
Portal Build, Deployment, and Release Management
Portal Build, Deployment, and Release Management
Portal build, deployment, and release management
Best practices and Jazz-enabled staging
Portal tools
WEF and WP environment — high-level release steps
Portlet deployment
Portal resources management via policies
Publishing to a remote AMI instance on the Amazon Cloud
Cloud-enabled environment provisioning, deployment, and release management with IBM Workload Deployer
Summary
7
Introduction to Web Experience Factory
Introduction to Web Experience Factory
What is Web Experience Factory?
Key benefits of using Web Experience Factory for portlet development
The development environment
Key components of WEF — builders, models, and profiles
Regeneration engine
Creating a WEF project
Creating your first Portlet
Executing your portlet from the designer
Deploying your portlet
Summary
8
Service Layers
Service Layers
The Service Consumer and Service Provider patterns in WEF
Service builders
Creating a service model
Testing the Service Provider models
Revisiting the Logical Operations
Invoking the Service Provider model from the Service Consumer model
Summary
9
Invoking Web Services
Invoking Web Services
Portal projects leveraging web services
The Web Service Call builder
Web service inputs from other builders
Sample model
Data transformation and manipulation of service response
The transform builders
IXml Java interface
Summary
10
Building the Application User Interface
Building the Application User Interface
Choosing the right builders to create the UI
Understanding how WEF builds UI
High-level and low-level builders
Data Service User Interface builder
Modifying the generated application
HTML Templates in WEF
Summary
11
The Dojo Builders and Ajax
The Dojo Builders and Ajax
What is Dojo and Ajax
The benefits of using Dojo and Ajax in portal development
The Dojo and Ajax related builders
Dojo Rich Text Editor sample
Dojo Tree builder sample
Summary
12
WEF Profiling
WEF Profiling
Profiling
Profile set editor
Profiling sample
Sample portlet — exposing profiles through the portal's Configure option
Role-based profiling
Summary
13
Types of Models
Types of Models
One portlet, many models
Model types demystified
Summary
14
WEF and Mobile Web Applications
WEF and Mobile Web Applications
Mobile devices
Desktop applications versus mobile web applications
WEF handling of mobile web applications
Summary
15
How to Implement a Successful Portal Project with WEF
How to Implement a Successful Portal Project with WEF
Planning for success
Required skills for developing a portlet with WEF
Development environment
XMLAccess scripts
Roles, permissions, access level
Development of POCs or prototypes
WEF project folder structure
Summary
16
Portlet and Portal Testing
Portlet and Portal Testing
Test strategy and plan
Functional/nonfunctional test tools and automation
Test environment and test data
Overall test metrics
Portal testing
Portlet testing — time to walk the walk
WEF testing
Security testing
Performance anti-patterns
Summary
17
Portal and Portlet Performance Monitoring
Portal and Portlet Performance Monitoring
Business and technology monitoring
APM as a discipline — choose your weapons
Portal server monitoring with ITCAM for WebSphere
PMI is your best friend
Web analytics
Cloud monitoring
Green Data Center monitoring
Summary
18
Portal Troubleshooting
Portal Troubleshooting
Problem determination and troubleshooting
Divide and conquer
IBM Support Assistant—general tools
ISA for WebSphere Portal
Troubleshooting in WebSphere Application Server v8
Splunk engine
Summary
19
Portal, WEF, and Portlet Tuning
Portal, WEF, and Portlet Tuning
Tuning — strategy and knowledge
Tuning lifecycle
Tuning candidates and test cases
Performance tuning — a deep dive into WEF
Performance-related log files
Summary
20
Portal Post-production
Portal Post-production
A2Z Bank business and technical monitoring
Measuring portal and cloud success
Training users and support
Summary

About the Reviewers

Joey Bernal is a Managing Partner and Chief Technology Officer of Element Blue, LLC, an award winning IBM business partner. Joey is a leader and veteran of IBM software and solutions, and was formally the Chief Programmer of IBM's Intelligent Operations Center (IOC). His extensive background in portal architecture, and development and enterprise application architecture was applied to leading the IOC design and development. Prior to that, Joey was a Technical Leader for the WebSphere Portal Software Services team for IBM. He has assisted in many technical areas, especially IBM cross-brand opportunities with WebSphere and WebSphere Portal solutions within an enterprise context.

He is the author of many popular books and articles including, Web 2.0 and Social Networking for the Enterprise, Application Architecture for WebSphere, and Programming Portlets. Joey has a B.Sc. in Computer Sciences from the University of Montana and is completing his Masters at Regis University.

Philip Cheshire is an Application Developer specializing in IBM WebSphere Portal technology. He has been working with the portal for over eight years, in the grocery and insurance industries. In addition to portal development, Philip also offers a wide range of consulting services related to Java and Android development. Learn more about Philip by visiting http://philipcheshire.com/.

Mark Polly, in the past 28 years of his experience in IT, has worked in roles such as Strategist, Technical Architect, and Developer in large companies (Eli Lilly, KeyBank, Progressive), and has been consulting for the past 15 years with Perficient. Mark is currently a Director in Perficient's Portal and Social Company Wide Practice. He primarily works on strategy engagements as they relate to portal, collaboration, and social technologies. Mark holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Purdue University, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Cleveland State University. His current company Perficient's work includes many different portal types and, vendors, and the integration to a variety of technologies, social capabilities, and mobile sites.

Mark was referenced in the book, Lotus Notes Developer Toolbox: Tips for Rapid and Successful Deployment, by Mark Elliott, which was published on October 10, 2006 at IBM Press. You can find more information about this book at http://www.ibmpressbooks.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0132214482.

Mark has also written several articles for IBM developerWorks, which can be found at (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/).

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