u Portal An OpenSource Higher Education Web Portal
u. Portal: An Open-Source, Higher Education Web Portal Justin Tilton, Chief Executive Officer instructional media + magic, inc. at The Educational Technology Standards Workshop UC Berkeley, July 31, 2002
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Overview • • Portals Student Expectations JA-SIG What is u. Portal? Architecture of u. Portal Customization Content Web Services
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG The aggregation game…
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Some Commercial Portals • • • Sun Microsystems (i. Planet) Epicentric (Foundation Server) Oracle (Application Server Portal) IBM (Web. Sphere Portal/Jetspeed) Computer Associates (Jasmine ii) Microsoft (Share. Point Portal Server) Sequoia (XML Portal Server) People. Soft (People. Soft Portal) Citrix (XPS) Sybase (Enterprise Portal)
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Common goals/different technologies • • • System Integration & Consistency Single Sign-on & Security Personalization Collaboration Component Reuse Task Management & Workflow Internationalization Customer Relationship Management Syndicated Content Subscription
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Higher Education • Most of these features apply to Higher Education • u. Portal is bridging the gap between corporate portals and the needs of Higher Education Institutions
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG The higher education web world Research Library Administration Instruction
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Students expectations shaped by. . . • Their experience applying for admissions and financial aid • Their use of financial services portals • Their use of the Internet • Their life in a “real-time, information rich” environment
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Students now expect. . . • Customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week • Complete information from a single source • Information by Web, e-mail, telephone, facsimile, and wireless devices • response time of 15 seconds for telephone, 10 seconds for Web, and 2 hours for e-mail and facsimile • access to a complete customer history
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Students prefer • Single sign-on even if that means revealing personal logons and passwords [aggregation/credential caching] • Selection of content [channels] and layout [user profile] • Common channel navigation and icons [consistent look & feel]
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG • Java In Administration Special Interest Group • www. ja-sig. org • Conferences biannually • Clearing house • https: //www. mis 4. udel. edu/Jasig. CH/ • Collaborative projects
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Mission The Java in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG) is an independent organization designed to increase the flow of information between educational institutions and companies involved in the development of administrative applications using Java technology. Today, with the benefit of object oriented technology and Java, we have a great opportunity in higher education to do things better as colleagues. The purpose of JA-SIG is, first, to share our experiences as we build applications with Java, and second, to develop a common infrastructure upon which we can build shareable components. We welcome the participation of both educational institutions and commercial enterprises in this effort.
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Goals The JA-SIG's goals are to: Nurture communication of best practices, new technologies, and innovative methodologies and projects related to Java Increase peer review, collaboration, and group discussion related to institutiondeveloped Java administrative applications Broaden Java technology cross-fertilization between firms and schools on both a functional and geographic basis
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Activities The JA-SIG membership is engaged in three activities. 1. Sponsorship of a twice-annual conference. 2. The JA-SIG Clearinghouse - a place on the Web to facilitate the sharing of Java components. 3. Development of a free, open source, open standard portal for higher education: u. Portal.
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Some JA-SIG Members • • • Boston College Princeton UBC Delaware Florida State Cornell Boston Georgetown USC MIT Cal Poly • • • Mississippi State Brown Yale Hawaii Columbia Cornell U Washington Minnesota UT Austin + ~300 more…
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG (UC Membership) • University of California, Berkeley • Randy Ballew, Jim Bullock, Jann Fong, Shifra Gaman, Kelly Haberer, Josh Marcus, Aron Roberts, Louise Schulden (JR), George A Suennen, Raymond Yee • UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry • John Ingham • UC Berkeley, Lawrence Hall of Science • Kathleen Connors, Carol Gray • University of California, Davis • Bill Grabert, Cathy Horiuchi, Deborah A. Lauriano, Sandra Stewart, Mark Youngs • University of California, Los Angeles • Scott Gruber, Anthony Merriweather, Albert Wu • University of California, Riverside • Stan Fletcher, Wesley Tait Stevens • University of California, San Diego • Marty Backer, Rich Backer, Christopher De Rosa, Chris Frymann, Elazar Harel, Lyle Kafader, Beth Surrell, Luis Valdez • University of California San Francisco • Mary Dykhuizen, Gary R. Forman • University of California, Santa Barbara • Karen Swartz, Stu Swartz
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG University of California, Irvine
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Cal. Poly San Luis Obispo
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Cornell University
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Illinois State University
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Ringling School of Art and Design
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG University of British Columbia
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Red Universitaria Nacional
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Universidad de Lima
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Yale University
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Denison University
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG University of Delaware
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Princeton University
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Columbia University
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Interactive Business Solutions
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Instructional media + magic
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG What is u. Portal? • Enterprise portal • Framework for presenting aggregated content (channels) • Personalization • Role-based access control • Open source, collaborative effort • Java web application
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG u. Portal Interfaces • Authentication • Proving your identity • Authorization • Deciding what you can access • Directory services • Such as populating Edu. Person • User preferences • Profiles, structure, themes, skins • Channel information • Availability and configuration
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG What is a Channel? • Displays content • XML feeds • Rich Site Summary (RSS) • Web services • Legacy systems • Interactive applications • E-Mail, Calendar, Briefcase, News, Survey, Search, Announcements, Classifieds, Discussion Forums, Address Book, Chat, Bookmarks • The Meteor Project • e. Transcript
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG The Meteor channel
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG e. Transcript
Architecture of u. Portal
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG What’s new in 2. 0? • • Abstraction of layout Structure/theme transformations Standard channel events Standard CSS classes More flexible publish/subscribe User profile management Web. Proxy channel
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Basic Architecture
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Basic Architecture Permissions authentication i. Planet LDAP User preferences Channel registry Other u. Portal Data Oracle db 2 my. SQL
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Channel • Elementary unit of presentation, defined by the IChannel interface User Interaction External Information Channel Content (Presentation) IChannel Set Runtime Data () Render XML ()
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG IChannel content must • Be well-formed XML such as XHTML, RSS, SVG, SMIL, or a SOAP message (HTML is not well formed XML) • Rendered by an XSL transformation using an XSL stylesheet
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Framework Organization User Interaction Presentation u. Portal Framework Channel
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG User Layout • User Layout is an abstract structure defining the overall content available to the user • user. Layout is a tree structure consisting of “folders” and “channels”, the later always being the leaf nodes
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG User Layout
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Structure Transformation User Layout Tab Column Channel Tab Channel Column Channel Tab Channel
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Theme Transformation
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Compiling the Presentation user. Layout Structure transformation XSLT structured. Layout set. Runtime. Data() XSLT Channels Theme transformation render. XML() HTML, WML Voice. ML. . .
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Content Transformation XML XHTML: Web Browser XSLT Processor HTML: PDA Stylesheet WML: Cell Phone
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Flexible Layouts • Structures • Tab / column • Tree / column • Themes • Multi-column • Multi-row • Skins • Matrix, Java
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Multiple Target Devices
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Tab / Column Layout
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Tree / Column Layout
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Theme: java
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Theme: imm
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Theme: matrix
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Architectural Features • • Extensive user customization Inter-channel communications Channel services Normalized database schema Profiles (multiple device management) Layout-specific preferences channels JNDI backbone
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG User preferences • Portal=rendering+customization • User Preferences Channel • Swappable layout and preference management modules • Profile management module • Tab-column specific UP module • Skin Selection
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG User Preferences
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Publish/Subscribe • Channel publishing document • Channel parameters • Default values • Modification permissions • Descriptions • Publish/Subscribe steps • Step sequence • Instructions, help • Flexible channel publishing
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Channel Types
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Channel Settings
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Channel Controls
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Channel Classification
Web services as an architecture
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG A Web service is • XML business messages • using eb. XML/SOAP compliant data transport • rendered using XSL transformations • for a remotely authenticated user
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Web services architecture is • XML “tagged” data content e. Xtensible Markup Language • eb. XML/SOAP data transport Simple Object Access Protocol • XSL transformations for presentation e. Xtensible stylesheet language and now • UDDI/WSDL directory services Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration, and Web Services Description Language
The Meteor Channel, an example of Web services
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Meteor in a nutshell… UDDI Lender XML
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Diagram of Meteor Concept Web Services HTML Student Meteor XML Access Provider Data Provider
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG As implemented. . . Web Services Meteor Secure HTML Standard Browser Secure XML u. Portal Meteor SOAP Database
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Data from multiple sources, locations
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Meteor Channel in the u. Portal
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG User Login
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Get Student List
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Select Student from List
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Select Transcript View
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Or Build Custom View
Portals, u. Portal & JA-SIG Get Transcript
The End Justin E. Tilton jet@immagic. com www. immagic. com
- Slides: 80