Appendix B: Using WebSphere Portal

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Overview

Note 

The following comes from Guide to WebSphere Portal 4.2—A technical discussion on portals (February 2003).

Portals serve as a simple, unified access point to Web applications. Portals also do much more—they provide valuable functions like security, search, collaboration, and workflow. A portal delivers integrated content and applications, plus a unified, collaborative workplace. Indeed, portals are the next-generation desktop, delivering e-business applications over the Web to all kinds of client devices.

A complete portal solution should provide users with convenient access to everything they need to get their tasks done—any time, anywhere, in a secure manner. IBM's vision is that portals are the key to reach and user experience of an e-business application. That is, portals provide the tools and user interface to access information and applications, and to manage the selection and personalization of content.

The WebSphere Platform IBM WebSphere Portal is part of the WebSphere software platform. The platform is organized into three areas of functionality:

1. Foundation and tools for building, running, and deploying applications. WebSphere Application Server, MQ messaging, and state-of-the-art development tools form a solid base for the platform. The foundation and tools provide the Internet expertise you need, enable you to build and use Web services, and link you to a greater technical community of developers and other WebSphere users.

2. Business integration for integrating internal business processes, including processes that involve business partners. WebSphere offerings such as WebSphere Business Integrator make it easy for your company to implement applications and business processes, including supply-chain management and the integration of existing processes with the Web.

3. Reach and user experience for personalizing Web-based content and making it accessible to any device. These WebSphere products fine-tune your users' experience and provide broad access for your customers, employees, business partners, and remote branch offices.

WebSphere Portal leads the Reach and User Experience part of the WebSphere Platform. It provides an extensible framework for interacting with enterprise applications, content, people, and processes. Self-service features allow end users to personalize and organize their own view of the portal in order to manage their own profiles and to publish and share documents with their colleagues.

WebSphere Portal provides additional services such as single sign-on, security, Web content publishing, search and personalization, collaboration services, enterprise application integration, support for mobile devices, and site analytics.

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