Portal Definitions

Although the desire for portals seems nearly universal, the meaning of the term "portal" is not universally agreed upon. It means different things to different people, and it has been seized on as a marketing mantra by software vendors to mean exactly what they happen to be selling. For instance, SharePoint Portal Server is the only current Microsoft product with "portal" in its name , but document management and a search engine are arguably more prominent than the digital dashboard portal feature in this product. If you are building an outward- facing portal on the Microsoft platform, SharePoint Portal Server is probably not your first choice in the Microsoft product family, as it is geared toward use inside the enterprise. On the other hand, Microsoft Content Management Server plausibly could be the centerpiece for building a public portal because it is scalable, its sites do not require the Internet Explorer browser, and users do not need to purchase client access licenses.

Trying to determine what is and is not a portal can spur quite spirited discussions. Is personalization an inherent feature of a portal? Does a search engine alone constitute a portal? How many portal elements are required for a web site to be considered a portal? Where can we find an intelligible and reliable definition of a portal?

At www.dictionary.com, the most applicable definition of a portal is:

A web site considered as an entry point to other web sites, often by being or providing access to a search engine.

This definition is a good starting point, but it fails to cover some of the ideas that have been packed into the word "portal" by the software industry. That's why vendors have come up with their own definitions. Table 1.1 lists some portal definitions from vendors and web sites.

Table 1.1. Vendor Definitions of Portal

Vendor	Source	Definition
Client Help Desk	A web site offers a great amount of content and services, either on many subjects (a horizontal portal, such as Yahoo! or About.com) or on a specific subject (a vertical portal, or vortal, such as women.com or WebMD).	www.clienthelpdesk.com/dictionary/portal.html
Plumtree	A corporate portal brings together content, applications, and services from incompatible platforms, for employees , partners and customers.	www.plumtree.com/default1.asp
BroadVision	A corporate portal is a personalized self-service application that extends your enterprise's information, resources, and business processes to your constituents (employees, partners, and customers) in a unified and collaborative manner.	www.broadvision.com/OneToOne/SessionMgr/products/products_main.jsp?BV_SessionID=NNNN1630750284.1039196546NNNN&BV_EngineID=ccccadcglgjhgglcefecefedghhdfjl.0&product=Portal&channelName=Enterprise+Portal&channelRuleset=Products+Channels&programName=One-To-One+Portal&programRuleset=Enterprise+Portal+Programs
Oracle	The portal is the single source of interaction with corporate applications, information, and it is the focal point for conducting day-to-day business. The enterprise portal you choose to deploy must allow you to: Ensure interoperability with an open architecture Scale to meeting changing performance requirements Build and maintain the portal with productive tools Integrate essential applications and content Simplify administration with a flexible management model	Oracle 9iAS Portal Overview www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/ias/portal/portal_overview.pdf
Traffick	The term "web portal" began to be used to describe megasites such as Yahoo, Excite, MSN, Netscape Netcenter, and AOL because many users used them as a starting point or entry point for their web surfing. The term "search engine" had become inadequate to describe the breadth of the offerings of these leading Internet destinations, although search and navigation are still pivotal to most people's online experience. (AOL is a bit different: it's always been an Internet access provider in addition to being a network of proprietary Internet content and services.)	www.traffick.com/article.asp?aID=9#what
Webopedia	Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as email, forums, search engines, and online shopping malls. The first web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into web portals to attract and keep a larger audience. A web portal is commonly referred to as simply a portal.	webopedia.internet.com/TERM/W/Web_portal.html

In the interest of simplification and at the risk of oversimplification, I would like to offer our own working definition of "portal" here. A web portal (or portal for short) is:

A web site (Internet or intranet) that combines information from multiple, disparate sources, offering a unified interface with the goal of improving usability and providing powerful search capabilities

The unified interface that the portal provides may access static content such as web pages, unstructured content such as documents, or applications with structured relational database or other backend content providers. The portals we explore and build in this book are targeted both at casual, anonymous users and at employees performing complicated tasks . Our goal is to provide a broad framework with a superset of the services and functionality that you are seeking for your portal.

Now that we have tackled the question of what a portal is in the broadest sense, let's explore some of the web sites that are characterized as portals to distill the essence of the portal concept as it is used for the balance of this book.