2.2 The Portal composite pattern

Composite patterns represent commonly occurring combinations of Business patterns and Integration patterns to form higher level solutions. Composite patterns typically solve major portions of functionality within a solution.

The Business and Integration patterns that are identified as the building blocks or the more common patterns of the Portal composite pattern are as follows :

Access Integration pattern
Self-Service business pattern
Collaboration business pattern
Information Aggregation business pattern

Please note that based on your specific requirements, your building blocks of the Business and Integration patterns for your portal may vary from the Portal composite pattern. For example, you may find that you have use for the Extended Enterprise business pattern in addition to the ones we defined, or you may find that you only need the Access Integration, and Self-Services business patterns for your portal. Based on your specific requirements, this would then be defined as a Portal custom design.

The visual representation of the Portal composite pattern is shown in Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1: Portal composite pattern showing mandatory patterns

For more details on the Portal composite pattern refer to the redbook, A Portal composite pattern Using WebSphere Portal V4.1 , SG24-6869.

2.2.1 Benefits

The Portal composite pattern is a combination of patterns, technologies and products. It allows for an understanding of the business and IT drivers that help an organization answer these questions:

Do I need a portal?
What can I achieve with a portal?

Once an organization has determined that it needs to aggregate information, target that information to specific users, analyze the usage of information, and collect and manage information, it can use a portal to handle these requirements. Consequently, using the Portal composite pattern will eventually lead to a choice of Application patterns and the subsequent combined Runtime pattern. This, in turn , will drive the creation of a portal architecture. Some specific benefits include:

A single aggregated view of content targeted to specific user types
Ability to analyze usage patterns to make marketing efforts more efficient
Ability to tailor the user interface to specific groups enabling a focus on cultural, language, and nationality -based differences
Single sign-on, allowing the user to "save time" and have access to information while lessening the requirements for direct interaction with the organization (saves money)

2.2.2 Limitations

The creation of a portal is a complex undertaking. It requires linking together various normally incompatible systems to provide a single view of the information in an enterprise. Although this of value to most organizations, it will require the following of an organization:

Organizational changes
Process changes
Restructuring of existing data sources
Rebuilding some existing applications to support available connectivity options
The detailed analysis of the various user groups that need to be supported (usually in much more detail than what currently exists)

A portal implementation assumes that there will be impacts in all of these areas.