Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (4-Volumes) P83 pptx

Having received a client query via the portal, the INDEX component, which provide the system’s coordination services invokes and executes the business logic modules %/0 UHTXLUHGLQVROYLQ

sources such as mobile devices and desktops

These requests are received via the portal and

after processing results are returned to the clients

via the portal Thus, the portal plays the front-end

role in receiving clients’ requests across the Web

via interface agents (Dai & Abrahams, 2005) and

delivering results to the clients Having received a

client query via the portal, the INDEX component,

which provide the system’s coordination services

invokes and executes the business logic modules

%/0UHTXLUHGLQVROYLQJWKHVSHFL¿HGSUREOHP

INDEX is deployed on multiple application servers

each interacting with a Web server hosting a

com-mercial portal product for which the University

has license agreements with the relevant vendor

The two main commercial products are SAP

Enterprise Portal and IBM WebSphere Portal

The consequence of executing business rules on BLM is a dynamic integration process binding different applications together behind a screen

In such a scenario, collaborative solutions are eventually delivered via portals

Figure 2 presents a technical view of our ap-plication integration framework using SAP and IBM packages INDEX integrates knowledge management and data management in one system The main role of the data management module is

to provide the required information via a dynamic problem solving process Goal-directed inference (GDI) and event-driven inference (EDI), as well

as the knowledge editing (back-end) facilities form the knowledge management module, which

is powered by a plan generator and a plan execu-tor The plan generator produces solution plans

Figure 2 Collaborative information delivery

Authentication Aggregation Navigation Browsers

SOAP

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Wrapper SOAP

Sales and Distribution

WBI Adapter for SAP XI

Web Services Adapter

Web Services

MVS Adapter

BLM BLM BLM

GDI

EDI

WebSphere Portal Server

IBM WebSphere Application Server INDEX Application

R/3

SAP

MVS

JMS Adapter

IDoc Adapter

ALE

EAI Tool Kit

Supplier Manufacturing

Merchandise

755

Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals

for incoming tasks, and the plan executor applies

the generated plans GDI and EDI are deployed

as Web services These Web services are located

on an IBM application server

The data management module is based on a

database virtual schema and offers services that

include user request transformation, mapping and

TXHU\JHQHUDWLRQV7KHWHFKQLFDOFRQ¿JXUDWLRQRI

this module is shown in Figure 3

Our PHEONIX framework is comparable to

an architecture proposed by Firestone (2003) in

his book on enterprise information portals and

knowledge management Our INDEX system

SOD\VDVLPLODUUROHWRWKDWSOD\HGE\WKHDUWL¿FLDO

information manager (AIM) layer in Firestone’s

Portal for Application Integration (PAI)

frame-work However, we believe that the INDEX Web

services as currently deployed through GDI and

(',DUHPRUHVFDODEOHDQGÀH[LEOHWKDQ)LUHVWRQH¶V

framework This is because INDEX technologies have specially been designed to work collab-oratively with existing technologies (e.g., third party applications via connectors and adaptors) and practices That is, our research project aims

to deliver collaborative Web-based applications that work effectively with existing applications including commercial products and tools

FUTURE TRENDS

The increased use of online information services will see Web-based client programs gradually replace traditional application user interface pro-grams Development standards will also become PRUHXQL¿HG3RUWDOVGXHWRWKHLUXQLTXHIHDWXUHV will play an increasingly important role in of-fering user interface services Portals’ successes

Figure 3 Collaborative information services

Third Party Applications Web Services

XML/DDT

ESB WSDL, UDDI, SOAP

ESB

ESB

Owners

Business Logic Module

Business Logic Module

Business Logic Module

Business Database

Business Database

Business Database

RESPONSE

REQUEST

RESPONSE

REQUEST

USER

USER

Service Requester

Adaptors Service Provider

Plan Generator

Plan Executor

Service Invocation

Request Transformation

Mapping Query Generation

Dynamic Business Models On-Demand Data Models

will also ultimately depend on the progress of

application integration across the Internet using

Web services In future research, we will extend

existing plug-in concepts and scope to allow

ap-plication modules and data sources to be integrated

dynamically on demand

CONCLUSION

This article discussed the relevance of Web-based

technologies, in particular, portal technologies, to

e-business It reviewed background technologies

relevant to portal operations and deployment,

and emphasised the importance of application

integration, especially with traditional existing

technologies We discussed the role of portals

as both a front-end interface with users and as

a vehicle for back-end integration with different

applications We presented the PHEONIX

solu-tion framework to demonstrate the use of portals

Related work has also been discussed

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank members of

PHOENIX research teams who have contributed

to various aspects of this work, particularly,

Ram Subramanian, Keithroy Andrade Prabhu,

Jonathan Liu, Rajadhi Wickramatunga, David

Kang, Jenny Pham, Leng Be, Paul Moynihan,

and Vuong Long The author is also grateful to

Dr Sam Kaspi for proof reading the article and

anonymous referees who provided valuable

com-ments in sharpening the focus of the article

REFERENCES

Britton, C (2001) Architectures and middleware:

Strategies for building large, integrated systems

Boston: Addison Wesley

Christensen, E., Curbera, F., Meredith, G., &

Weerawarana, S (2001) WSDL 1.1 http://www.

w3.org/TR/wsdl Dai, W., & Abrahams, B (2005) A multiagent architecture for semantic Web resources In

Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM In-ternational Conference on Intelligence Agent Technology IAT 2005 (pp 289 -292) France:

IEEE Computer Society Press Retrieved from http://www.hds.utc.fr/IAT05/

Dai, W., & Wright, S L (1996) Strategies for integrating knowledge-based system techniques

within conventional software environments.

International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 11(11), 989-1011.

Firestone, J M (2003) Enterprise information

portals and knowledge management Burlinton,

MA: Butterworth Heinemann; Elsevier Sci-ence

Gartner Group (2001) The need for Web services standards—Research note Retrieved from http:// www3.gartner.com/Init

KEY TERMS

Application Server: Refers to software

resid-ing beneath the Web server to handle the special designated tasks received by the Web server from end-users according to business logic

Event-Driven Inference (EDI): An inference

component of INDEX knowledge management system, which is deployed as a Web service

Goal-Directed Inference (GDI): An inference

component of INDEX knowledge management system, which is deployed as a Web service

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP):

'H¿QHVKRZPHVVDJHVVKRXOGEHIRUPDWWHGDQG transmitted across Internet

757

Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals

Portlets: These are Web components that

process requests and generate dynamic content

for portals Portals use portlets as pluggable user

interface components that provide a presentation

layer to information systems

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP):

Used for invoking Web services It provides an envelope for sending and receiving XML data and documents

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP):

A standard for portals to access and display port-lets that are hosted on a remote server

This work was previously published in Encyclopedia of Portal Technologies and Applications, edited by A Tatnall, pp 140-145, copyright 2007 by Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global).

Chapter 3.6

Web-Enabled Portals for

E-Business Workplace

Wita Wojtkowski

Boise State University, USA

INTRODUCTION

Portals are information systems that support the

user in his or her individual process with

infor-mation production and communication The term

portal, in information technology terms, appeared

in late 1990s at a time of the widespread use of

the Internet by individuals and organizations

(Finkelstein & Aiken, 1999; Dias, 2001; Bristow,

Dickinson, Duke, Henry, & Makey, 2001;

Col-lins, 2001, 2003)

There are many types of portals on the Internet:

portals for general consumer use and

entertain-ment (my.yahoo.com), for specialized

informa-WLRQZZZEULQWFRPIRUVSHFL¿FFRPPXQLWLHV

(Austrian Academic Portal at www.portal.ac.at/),

for business enterprises (NEC global portal at

www.nec.com, NEC US portal at www.necus

com/, NEC European portal at www.neceurope

com) In general, portals can be divided into two

categories: public and enterprise (Goodman &

Kleinschmidt, 2003; Forrester, 2003)

Public portals started as Internet directories (Yahoo!) or search engines (Excite, Lycos, Alta-Vista, and InfoSeek) Services that require user registration such as free e-mail, customization features, and chat rooms were added to allow repeated use, and to make users stay longer at the site

Enterprise portals started as intranets and ex-WUDQHWVWKH³HQWHUSULVHZHEV´WKDWZHUHLQWHQGHGWR provide easy-to-use, secure, and personalized sites that may extend to an organization’s employees

as well as to its customers and business partners Enterprise portals evolved to include collabora-tion tools so that customers, business partners, and employees are empowered to maximize their value to the organization Portals that combine Web communications and thinking inside large enterprises are considered as both a labor-saving and a cost-saving technology Enterprise portals are also referred to as corporate portals Some corporate analysts predict that portals spending

759

Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace

ZLOOEHRQHRIWKHWRS¿YHDUHDVIRUJURZWKLQWKH

Internet technologies sector

BACKGROUND

While there are multitudes of enterprise portal

deployments, each can be assigned to one of three

distinct groups These groups, in increasing order

RIFRPSOH[LW\DUHFODVVL¿HGDVIXQGDPHQWDOLQ-tegrated, or collaborative (Strauss, 1999; Terra &

Gordon, 2002; Moore, 2002; Plumtree Software,

2005; Portals Magazine, 2005).

Fundamental Portals

Fundamental portals are those that offer a

frame-ZRUNZKHUHXVHUVFDQ¿QG:HEDSSOLFDWLRQVIURP

a single entry point They provide very little

func-tionality and are essentially a means to connect

legacy applications Portals of this type do not

attempt any type of enterprise process integration

and typically function as a list of links

Integrated Portals

Integrated portals integrate the applications and

the delivery of customized, role-based content,

while providing access to information across the

organization

Integrated portal initiatives in organizations

focus on providing access to information and to

streamlining information technology and business

operations However, these types of solutions

are not able to integrate fully people, processes,

content, and applications

Collaborative Portals

Collaborative portals integrate users, content, and

collaborative tools Collaboration services such

as presence awareness, instant messaging, Web

conferencing, and third-party applications in the

context of business processes are integrated into

the portal The user of the collaborative portal can tap into different resources throughout the enterprise, leveraging various collaborative tools through a consistent interface

A collaborative portal requires that an enter-prise looks at itself as a collection of business SURFHVVHV¿QDQFLDOPDQDJHPHQWSURGXFWGHYHO-opment, etc.) rather than functional departments (marketing, manufacturing, or human resources) RU VLPSOL¿HG VHJPHQWV EXVLQHVVWRHPSOR\HH

or business-to-customer) Collaborative portals offer more than just access to applications and content The most evolved collaborative portals enable key business processes, appear integrated and personalized for each individual’s roles in the organization, and allow access to people and ex-pertise through collaboration (Plumtree, 2005)

FEATURES OF ENTERPRISE PORTALS

The features of enterprise portals include (Sribar

& Lynn, 2003; Pushmann & Alt, 2004):

• Single Touch Point: The portal is the

deliv-ery mechanism for all business information services

• Collaboration: Portal users can

communi-cate synchronously, through chat or messag-ing, or asynchronously, through e-mail and blogs

Services that support the full lifecycle of document creation and provide mechanisms for authoring, approval, version control, scheduled publishing, indexing, and search-ing

PHPEHUVWRVXEVFULEHWRVSHFL¿FW\SHVRI content and services Users can customize the look and feel of their environments

• Integration: The connection of functions

and data from multiple systems into new

components

Figure 1 shows an example of the customized

and personalized component of an enterprise

portal from Plumtree Software (2005) Through

a personalized portal page such as this one, the

user is able to access services and content (both

static and dynamic), as well as aggregate disparate

DSSOLFDWLRQVWKHVHDUHLGHQWL¿HGLQ)LJXUHZLWK

heavy arrows and boxes containing explanatory

text)

Since the enterprise portals are now designed

to allow collaboration, a portal’s content (or part

of it) should be accessible on multiple platforms

such as personal computers, personal digital

as-sistants, and cell phones (Portals Community,

2005) Generic portal ecosystem components are

shown in Figure 2

The Working of a Portal

When a user requests actions, such as searches

or information retrieval, the portal server locates and initiates the appropriate gadget These gadgets perform the requested task and send the results back to the portal server, which formats and sends the reply back to the client Gadgets can be

a simple pass-through to an HTML page or they can be complex applications Both the portal itself and the gadgets run on a servlet engine inside

an HTTP Web server An HTTP Web server is software that renders and presents HTML pages

to browser applications

A servlet engine is a computer program that UXQVZLWKLQDQ+773:HEVHUYHUDQGWDNHVVSHFL¿F requests from the Web server, processes them, and then hands them back to the Web server in HTML format for it to render

The open source Apache HTTP Web server (http://httpd.apache.org/) is an example of a Web

Figure 1 Plumtree portal page example

761

Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace

server The servlet engine could be the Tomcat

(http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html),

which is written in Java (http://java.sun.com)

Portal Environment

The elements of the portal environment are

these:

• Application Server: An application server

provides the underlying development and

runtime infrastructure for the portal

Ex-amples of J2EE application servers include

Sun ONE, BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere,

Oracle 9iAS, and JBoss Many of the

appli-cation server vendors incorporate portals as

add-ons to their base product For example,

IBM Websphere Portal Server, Oracle Portal,

and BEA Portal are all built on top of the

corresponding application server and in

some cases are sold as one package Several

of the stand-alone portal products, such as

Plumtree, Epicentric, and Corechange, have

Java components or are Java based and take advantage of an application server

con-junction with an application server to provide the runtime environment for client requests The HTTP Web servers used with portals include Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Apache, and so on When a customer brings up the portal page, the Web browser makes a request of the Web server The Web server then passes the request to the application server The portal (and its associated gadgets) runs on top of the ap-plication server

• Database: Most portals have an underlying

database (such as Oracle, DB2, Sybase, or SQL Server) that they use to keep track of LQIRUPDWLRQVSHFL¿FWRWKHSRUWDO²VXFKDV users, personalization settings, available Web services/gadgets, and security This use of the database is in addition to the use

of the database by a transactional system (for example, ERP, CRM, or SCM system)

Figure 2 Generic portal ecosystem components

that a portal might query in order to present

DSSOLFDWLRQVSHFL¿FGDWDWRFXVWRPHUV

scheme to organize a collection of

informa-tion Ideally, a taxonomy would take a set

of documents and make it easy to browse,

search, or otherwise navigate information

in which the user is interested A taxonomy

is analogous to a folder structure, with the

additional functional components of

meta-GDWDIRUGRFXPHQWFODVVL¿FDWLRQDVZHOODV

the rules for categorization Most enterprise

portals have a taxonomy for this purpose;

some may have automatically generated

tax-onomies based on the metadata provided

• Crawler: A crawler is an automated process

WKDWUHDGVLQGH[HVDQGFODVVL¿HVGRFXPHQWV

at a predetermined interval A Web crawler,

for instance, would crawl target Web pages

periodically to determine if the content has

changed The content is then indexed into

the taxonomy so that customers can easily

¿QG LW 7KH FUDZOHU GRHV QRW QHFHVVDULO\

make another copy of the crawled document;

rather, it indexes it by creating a virtual card

that describes the document The card then

lives in the portal index

reposi-tory contains metadata about the content

within the portal and the structure of that

content This includes metadata about the

taxonomy, as well as metadata for the

indi-vidual documents For example, each

docu-ment placed in a folder called Clients might

KDYHDPHWDGDWD¿HOGFDOOHG³&OLHQW´ZKLFK

would have one or more values The value

RIWKH&OLHQW¿HOGIRUDSDUWLFXODUGRFXPHQW

is metadata about that document

• Gadget: This is a user interface for

present-ing data and functionality from multiple

applications on a single Web page Gadgets

encompass the presentation layer and

busi-ness logic They also tie into back-end data

sources and are given different names by

vendors (portlets, blocks, Web modules, Web parts) Many portal vendors have gadgets for connecting to enterprise systems (such

as SAP) as well as for collaboration, news, and other functions

engine is used for sorting documents into the folders of taxonomy The categorization engine may do this based on metadata in the documents, business rules, the content RIWKHGRFXPHQWVHDUFKFULWHULDRU¿OWHUV

or some other scheme

• Filters: $ ¿OWHU LV JHQHUDOO\ DYDLODEOH LQ

a taxonomy to restrict the documents that are admitted into a particular folder or that DUHUHWXUQHGDVSDUWRIDVHDUFK$¿OWHUFDQ

be word based (for example, if a document KDV WKH ZRUG ³,%0´ FRQFHSW EDVHG IRU example, if the document is like another document), or rule based (for example, if WKH¿HOGFDOOHG&OLHQWKDVDYDOXHRI,%0

• Index: An index is a collection of

informa-tion that allows for fast query and retrieval of information Within the context of a portal,

an index is usually a combination of a full-text index and a metadata repository for the documents/content that are included within the portal

• Virtual Card: Within an index or metadata

repository, a virtual card is a description of

a single document or piece of content within the portal The card usually contains infor-mation about where the content physically resides and contains the values of one or PRUHPHWDGDWD¿HOGVDERXWWKDWGRFXPHQW 7KHFDUGLVWKH³SODFHKROGHU´IRUWKHGRFX-ment within the portal

that accepts and responds to requests over the Internet Typically, a Web service accepts requests in an XML-based format The ac-tual format of the request and the response depends on the XML standards that are being used One such standard is SOAP There are

763

Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace

public registries and languages—such as

UDDI, WSDL—which are used to catalog

the different available Web services A

call-ing program can query the UDDI registry

WR ¿QG DQ DSSURSULDWH :HE VHUYLFH WKHQ

use WSDL to determine which parameters

WKHVHUYLFHQHHGVDQG¿QDOO\XVHDFDOOLQJ

protocol and XML standard like SOAP to

make the call to the Web service

• 8VHU3UR¿OHV (DFKSRUWDOFRQWDLQVDSUR¿OH

IRUHDFKRILWVXVHUV7KLVSUR¿OHLVXVHGIRU

customization and personalization Each

of the gadgets in a portal has access to this

XVHUSUR¿OHDQGFDQXVHLWWRVWRUHSUHIHU-ence information about a user or a class of

XVHUV7KLVSUR¿OHGHWHUPLQHVKRZWKHXVHU

FRQ¿JXUHVWKHKRPHSDJHRIDSRUWDODQG

chooses which gadgets show up and what

information they show

enter-prise portals contain a content management

system, which allows approved users to

submit information into the portal There is

typically an approval process that eventually

results in the content becoming available in

the correct part of the portal’s taxonomy A

content management system can deal with

documents in their original formats (for

example, Microsoft Word or PDF) or might

contain Web editing features to allow users

to author Web pages

(EAI): EAI is an umbrella term for all

software and services meant to integrate

enterprise applications with one another

An EAI layer is needed so that queries can

be coordinated, and results consolidated

Given the complexities of each type of

ap-plication (for example, sales, manufacturing,

VHUYLFHSXUFKDVLQJWKLVFDQEHDGLI¿FXOW

and expensive process A number of vendors

have released software that makes this

pro-cess much simpler, including Crossworlds,

WebMethods, Tibco, NEON, and IBM EAI

impacts the portal because the portal ideally will show consolidated information from multiple back-end systems

On Portal Vendors

Portal technology is both infrastructure and a software application Those who want to imple-ment portals in organizations are faced with various levels of vendor, technology, and budget risk Moreover, portals, like any information technology purchase in an organization, are re-quired to prove their value Valuation of portals LVHVSHFLDOO\GLI¿FXOWEHFDXVHWKHSRUWDOPDUNHWLV DOZD\VLQDVWDWHRIÀX[$QH[FHOOHQWVLWHZZZ portalscommunity com/ (Portals Community, 2005), is highly recommended for those interested

in an unbiased view concerning portal technology and the portal market

FUTURE TRENDS

Portal software is maturing from a simple interface for accessing multiple systems to a powerful plat-form for delivering new, composite applications The survivors in the portal market have grown by incorporating new technologies for content man-agement, collaboration, search, and single sign-on The result is the emergence of an enterprise-wide working environment on the Web (Plumtree, 2005) This environment may remain open, or may yet become part of application servers, which have begun to offer functionality beyond the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition standard (Pushmann

& Alt, 2004) At stake is whether the portal, and the entire enterprise Web, is merely an extension

of client-server infrastructure, based on a single type of application server, or an environment that

is open in a fundamentally new way This open-ness is in the interests of any organization that anticipates having to support multiple application servers For this reason openness will triumph

to deliver collaborative Web-based applications that work effectively with existing applications. .. provides an envelope for sending and receiving XML data and documents

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP):

A standard for portals to access and display port-lets that are... access to applications and content The most evolved collaborative portals enable key business processes, appear integrated and personalized for each individual’s roles in the organization, and allow