7.6 Other portlet builders

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7.6 Other portlet builders

7.6.1 Sofor Interactive Portlet Builder for Domino

Sofor Interactive Portlet Builder for Domino is a tool for bringing Lotus Domino database views and documents into the portal. The portlet builder can connect to any Domino database. No changes to existing databases are needed. All customization is done in the edit mode of the portlet.

Portlet Builder portlets work in all browsers that are supported by WebSphere Portal or WebSphere Everyplace Access. With WebSphere Everyplace Access, off-line functionality is available as well: Domino database access through Portlet Builder can be defined as off-line portlets, and can be used on a PDA even when no connection to the portal is available.

Views are displayed in portlets, and the user is able to navigate through the view. Clicking a line displays those fields of the document that have been configured to be published in the portal. The portal also is used to authenticate users.

Views and document fields from any Lotus Domino database can be published in a WebSphere portal, without any changes to the existing databases, through configuration wizards with no programming.

All traffic from the portal to the Domino Server goes through the internal firewall. Terminals never access Domino servers directly.

click to expand
Figure 7-49: Sofor Interactive Portlet for Lotus Domino in our Scenario, retrieving data from the customer database

Considerations

Sofor Interactive Portlet Builder for Domino could be used when you want an easy, basic tool for exposing any Domino database views in a portal without programming skills, or if your company has WebSphere Everyplace Access and your mobile users need to access Domino views or documents.

The limitations of this solution are similar to those of using existing portlets, described in Chapter 3. Specifically, you are limited to the functionality the Portlet Builder offers. Also, the lack of session pooling might be an issue if your portal has large numbers of portlets and users.

Implementation details

Sofor Portlet Builder can be downloaded from the IBM Portlet catalog at:

  • http://www-3.ibm.com/services/cwi/portal/_pagr/105/

Once you have installed and placed the portlet in a page, you need to configure it in edit mode.

Table 7-5: Parameters for Sofor Interactive Portlet Builder for Domino

Parameter

Description

Example

Host

Host name/IP address of the Domino server

itsotest-dom

UserID

Web user ID. User must have restricted Java/COM agent execution rights.

wpsadmin

Password

Password of user above.

password

Database

Database name (and path if needed).

apps/Customer.nsf

Title

Title of portlet loaded in title bar.

MyTitle

View

Name or alias of used viewa/COM agent execution rights.

MyView

Columns

Zero-based column number and title of selected columns. Multivalue separator is comma ",".a/COM agent execution rights.

0=My first column,2=My second column

Link column

Zero-based number of column to show as link.

1

Fields

Fieldname and title to show when document selected. field=title. Multivalue separator is comma ",".

field1=My first field,field2=My second field

Click OK to finish your configuration changes and log off. During a test of the portlet we faced an issue where all the configuration changes made in edit mode did not become active until we logged off and the logged back in to the portal.

7.6.2 Aptrix Portlet Connector

Aptrix Portlet Connector is a WebSphere Portal application that can query and aggregate data from multiple data sources, and display that content in a single portlet. Portlet Connector uses the Aptrix Connect product (installed as middleware on WebSphere Portal) to natively query data hosted on Domino servers, relational databases, and "flat" data sources (HTML, ASCII text, and so forth). Individual Aprtix Portlet Connector portlets can be installed that access one or more data sources, and aggregate the content into a single portlet view.

click to expand
Figure 7-50: Example portal page created wth Aprtix Portlet Connector

Considerations

Aptrix Portlet Connector is a good choice if you are already using Aptrix Connect, or if you are looking for a way to aggregate multiple data sources into one or more portlets.

Implementation details

Aptrix Portlet Connector is very easy to configure. All configuration is performed through the edit interface of each portlet. No Java skills are required, but if the functionality does not meet your specific needs, it is not possible to customize the portlets created with the Aptrix Portlet Connector.

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Figure 7-51: Aptrix Portlet Connector configuration interface

Aptrix Portlet Connector uses a proprietary Java socket server to communicate directly with the Domino server, and thus does not require HTTP or IIOP to be running on all back-end Domino servers.

It supports Domino 5 and 6 and WebSphere Portal v4.1 and v4.2.



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Portalizing Domino Applications for Websphere Portal
Portalizing Domino Applications for Websphere Portal
ISBN: 0738499811
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 103
Authors: IBM Redbooks

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