3.1 Overview

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This option relies on using existing prepackaged portlets to integrate existing Notes and Domino applications into the WebSphere Portal environment. Depending on the extent of your Notes and Domino applications, the techniques described in this chapter may provide a quick and effective option for integration into the portal environment. The programming skills required to use these techniques are minimal, and with some portlets, no programming skills are needed. Basic WebSphere Portal administration skills are needed. It is helpful to have Notes and Domino development skills to be able to recognize which options are beneficial, but it is not crucial.

3.1.1 Technologies involved

This option provides relatively simple techniques to integrate existing Notes and Domino applications into WebSphere Portal. There may be existing Notes and Domino applications that would not benefit from these technologies. The technologies presented involve taking Web-enabled data that is being generated in Domino and linking to or displaying this data using existing portlets in the portal environment.

3.1.2 Software and tools used

This section provides a brief description of the software and tools that are used in the implementation of the techniques included in this option. The software and tools used are as follows:

Notes and Domino
WebSphere Portal

Notes and Domino

A fully installed, configured, and running Domino server is a base requirement for this option. A workstation Notes client should be included because some techniques link to the supporting Notes client. Applicable versions are identified in the integration techniques section of this chapter.

WebSphere Portal

The base requirement for this option is for a fully installed, configured, and running WebSphere Portal Extend 4.2 environment, including the supporting infrastructure. This base environment will include a DB2® or Oracle database, and an LDAP authentication directory (which could be Domino), for use by WebSphere Portal. In addition, the Lotus Notes and collaborative portlets must also be installed. A properly configured WebSphere Portal is vital for communication to the Domino server.

3.1.3 Integration techniques

This option includes techniques that enable data from Notes and Domino applications to be accessed via existing portlets that are included with WebSphere Portal. Our examples are based on an existing Notes and Domino application that resides in the apps subdirectory of our Domino server. The application includes two Web-enabled databases, Sales Reporting (Sales.nsf) and Customers (Customers.nsf), as well as an internal look-up database called Products (Products.nsf). The databases contain design elements that can be accessed through a Web browser as well as through the Notes client. The application and these databases are described in detail in Chapter 2.3, "Case study: A simple sales tracking application" on page 47.

The techniques included in this chapter are the following:

QuickLinks portlet
Web Page portlet
Web Clipping portlets
Domino portlets
XML portlets
Integrated portlets

For each technique, the discussion includes an overview, considerations regarding when its use is appropriate and details about the portlet, and complete implementation details, configuration options, and results.

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