Are Portal Servers dead?

By -
Several years ago I was a big fan of Portal Servers (in particular for internal use), and I thought that were going to take off as the standard for public-facing sites (in particular with the release of JSR 168). This however has never eventuated.

I have therefore been asking the question for the past few years of whether the use of Portal Server technologies for public-facing sites is worthwhile, and if so for what sites (or subsets thereof). I am not questioning that the business concept of B2C, B2B, B2E, etc. portals is required, but rather whether the technology platform of Portal Servers for public-facing sites is overkill.

Portal Servers typically perform a number of primary functions (but there are other alternatives), some of which an organisation may not care about:
  • Integration with Authentication / Authorisation framework
  • Templating
  • Personalisation
  • Facilitate application/portlet reuse
  • In-context content management
  • Analytics & Reporting
  • Search
  • Ability to delegate control over part of a site / page

For intranet sites, I think Portals have a place, but I am not as convinced for other sites. So what do you think? Where do you think it makes sense to use Portal Servers (if anywhere)?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Solution: Getting macOS Messages to work with Google Chat / Talk / Hangouts in High Sierra

By -
Image
The Messages application wasn't working for me on macOS and I was wanting it to work with my Google Chat / Talk / Hangouts service. It appears that with macOS High Sierra a workaround is required. After struggling to get it going I finally got it going after some searching on the Internet and trying a couple of supposed fixes. What ended up working for me were the instructions on  https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gtalk-messages-solution-found-high-sierra.2073393/ with a couple of tweaks. The tweaks were required to support 2FA which is enabled on my account. The instructions, repeated here so that I can find them again if required and to assist others having the same problem, are as follows: Go to System Preferences / Internet Accounts and delete your google account. Open Terminal and run the following commands (Warning: This will delete your history!): find ~/Library/Preferences -name "*iChat*" -delete rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Messages rm -rf...
Read more

Using Raspberry Pi as a Time Capsule to backup a Mac

By -
Image
Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of OS X. It keeps a copy of all your files, and remembers how your system looked on any given day so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past. Apple sells a device called a Time Capsule, but rather than buy one of these I opted for a diy approach using my  Raspberry Pi  and so far it seems to be working well. My setup consists of: Raspberry Pi Model B running Raspbian connected via network cable to a router MacBook Pro running OS X Yosemite v10.10.1 connected via Wifi to a router External 2TB drive (with separate power) attached via USB to the Raspberry Pi It was relatively easy to setup following the instructions at  http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=47029  . I am reiterating the instructions here just in case the page disappears (with a couple of additions I needed): 1. Start with a clean installation of Raspbian, configured for your network 2. Power down your Pi, con...
Read more

IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference 2015 - Day 2

By -
Today was the second and final day of the IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference 2015. Below is a summary of my key notes. Going beyond IT. What EA can really mean for your organisation John Pearson, Business Architect, IAG Consider the Demand vs Supply side of architecture IAG is using traditional TOGAF domains (Information, Application, Technology Infrastructure and Security) with business architecture being used to better align with the demand from the business Enterprise Business Motivation Model (EBMM) - Accenture, Nick Malik ( http://www.motivationmodel.com/ ) anchor diagram for business architecture using to understand change impact Bake business architecture approaches in early in the architecture journey Understand the business, its priorities and where value can be added Understand architecture capabilities in service to the business Understand key stakeholder n...
Read more