Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (4-Volumes) P83 pptx

754 Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals sources such as mobile devices and desktops. These requests are received via the portal and after processing results are returned to the clients via the portal. Thus, the portal plays the front-end role in receiving clients’ requests across the Web via interface agents (Dai & Abrahams, 2005) and delivering results to the clients. Having received a client query via the portal, the INDEX component, which provide the system’s coordination services invokes and executes the business logic modules %/0UHTXLUHGLQVROYLQJWKHVSHFL¿HGSUREOHP INDEX is deployed on multiple application servers each interacting with a Web server hosting a com- mercial portal product for which the University has license agreements with the relevant vendor. The two main commercial products are SAP Enterprise Portal and IBM WebSphere Portal. The consequence of executing business rules on BLM is a dynamic integration process binding different applications together behind a screen. In such a scenario, collaborative solutions are eventually delivered via portals. Figure 2 presents a technical view of our ap- plication integration framework using SAP and IBM packages. INDEX integrates knowledge management and data management in one system. The main role of the data management module is to provide the required information via a dynamic problem solving process. Goal-directed inference (GDI) and event-driven inference (EDI), as well as the knowledge editing (back-end) facilities form the knowledge management module, which is powered by a plan generator and a plan execu- tor. The plan generator produces solution plans Figure 2. Collaborative information delivery Authentication Aggregation Navigation Browsers SOAP Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Wrapper SOAP Sales and Distribution WBI Adapter for SAP XI Web Services Adapter Web Services MVS Adapter BLM BLM BLM GDI EDI WebSphere Portal Server IBM WebSphere Application Server INDEX Application SAP XI SAP R/3 SAP MVS JMS Adapter IDoc Adapter ALE EAI Tool Kit Supplier Manufacturing Merchandise 755 Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals for incoming tasks, and the plan executor applies the generated plans. GDI and EDI are deployed as Web services. These Web services are located on an IBM application server. The data management module is based on a database virtual schema and offers services that include user request transformation, mapping and TXHU\JHQHUDWLRQV7KHWHFKQLFDOFRQ¿JXUDWLRQRI this module is shown in Figure 3. Our PHEONIX framework is comparable to an architecture proposed by Firestone (2003) in his book on enterprise information portals and knowledge management. Our INDEX system SOD\VDVLPLODUUROHWRWKDWSOD\HGE\WKHDUWL¿FLDO information manager (AIM) layer in Firestone’s Portal for Application Integration (PAI) frame- work. However, we believe that the INDEX Web services as currently deployed through GDI and (',DUHPRUHVFDODEOHDQGÀH[LEOHWKDQ)LUHVWRQH¶V framework. This is because INDEX technologies have specially been designed to work collab- oratively with existing technologies (e.g., third party applications via connectors and adaptors) and practices. That is, our research project aims to deliver collaborative Web-based applications that work effectively with existing applications including commercial products and tools. FUTURE TRENDS The increased use of online information services will see Web-based client programs gradually replace traditional application user interface pro- grams. Development standards will also become P R U H X Q L ¿H G  3R U W D O V GXHW R W KHL U X Q LTXHIHDW X U HV   will play an increasingly important role in of- fering user interface services. Portals’ successes Figure 3. Collaborative information services Third Party Applications Web Services XML/DDT ESB WSDL, UDDI, SOAP ESB ESB Owners Business Logic Module Business Logic Module Business Logic Module Business Database Business Database Business Database RESPONSE REQUEST RESPONSE REQUEST USER USER Portal Service Requester Adaptors Service Provider Knowledge Manager Data Manager Plan Generator Plan Executor Service Invocation Request Transformation Mapping Query Generation Dynamic Business Models On-Demand Data Models 756 Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals will also ultimately depend on the progress of application integration across the Internet using Web services. In future research, we will extend existing plug-in concepts and scope to allow ap- plication modules and data sources to be integrated dynamically on demand. CONCLUSION This article discussed the relevance of Web-based technologies, in particular, portal technologies, to e-business. It reviewed background technologies relevant to portal operations and deployment, and emphasised the importance of application integration, especially with traditional existing technologies. We discussed the role of portals as both a front-end interface with users and as a vehicle for back-end integration with different applications. We presented the PHEONIX solu- tion framework to demonstrate the use of portals. Related work has also been discussed. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank members of PHOENIX research teams who have contributed to various aspects of this work, particularly, Ram Subramanian, Keithroy Andrade Prabhu, Jonathan Liu, Rajadhi Wickramatunga, David Kang, Jenny Pham, Leng Be, Paul Moynihan, and Vuong Long. The author is also grateful to Dr. Sam Kaspi for proof reading the article and anonymous referees who provided valuable com- ments in sharpening the focus of the article. REFERENCES Britton, C. (2001). Architectures and middleware: Strategies for building large, integrated systems. Boston: Addison Wesley. Christensen, E., Curbera, F., Meredith, G., & Weerawarana, S. (2001). WSDL 1.1. http://www. w3.org/TR/wsdl Dai, W., & Abrahams, B. (2005). A multiagent architecture for semantic Web resources. In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM In- ternational Conference on Intelligence Agent Technology. IAT 2005 (pp. 289 -292). France: IEEE Computer Society Press. Retrieved from http://www.hds.utc.fr/IAT05/ Dai, W., & Wright, S. L. (1996). Strategies for integrating knowledge-based system techniques within conventional software environments. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 11(11), 989-1011. Firestone, J. M. (2003). Enterprise information portals and knowledge management. Burlinton, MA: Butterworth Heinemann; Elsevier Sci- ence. Gartner Group. (2001). The need for Web services standards—Research note. Retrieved from http:// www3.gartner.com/Init KEY TERMS Application Server: R efer s t o s o f t w a r e r e sid - ing beneath the Web server to handle the special designated tasks received by the Web server from end-users according to business logic. Event-Driven Inference (EDI): An inference component of INDEX knowledge management system, which is deployed as a Web service. Goal-Directed Inference (GDI): An inference component of INDEX knowledge management system, which is deployed as a Web service. HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP): 'H¿QHVKRZPHVVDJHVVKRXOGEHIRUPDWWHGDQG transmitted across Internet. 757 Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals Portlets: These are Web components that process requests and generate dynamic content for portals. Portals use portlets as pluggable user interface components that provide a presentation layer to information systems. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP): Used for invoking Web services. It provides an envelope for sending and receiving XML data and documents. Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP): A standard for portals to access and display port- lets that are hosted on a remote server. This work was previously published in Encyclopedia of Portal Technologies and Applications, edited by A. Tatnall, pp. 140-145, copyright 2007 by Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global). 758 Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 3.6 Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace Wita Wojtkowski Boise State University, USA INTRODUCTION Portals are information systems that support the user in his or her individual process with infor- mation production and communication. The term portal, in information technology terms, appeared in late 1990s at a time of the widespread use of the Internet by individuals and organizations (Finkelstein & Aiken, 1999; Dias, 2001; Bristow, Dickinson, Duke, Henry, & Makey, 2001; Col- lins, 2001, 2003). There are many types of portals on the Internet: portals for general consumer use and entertain- ment (my.yahoo.com), for specialized informa- WLRQZZZEULQWFRPIRUVSHFL¿FFRPPXQLWLHV (Austrian Academic Portal at www.portal.ac.at/), for business enterprises (NEC global portal at www.nec.com, NEC US portal at www.necus. com/, NEC European portal at www.neceurope. com). In general, portals can be divided into two categories: public and enterprise (Goodman & Kleinschmidt, 2003; Forrester, 2003). Public portals started as Internet directories (Yahoo!) or search engines (Excite, Lycos, Alta- Vista, and InfoSeek). Services that require user registration such as free e-mail, customization features, and chat rooms were added to allow repeated use, and to make users stay longer at the site. Enterprise portals started as intranets and ex- WUDQHWVWKH³HQWHUSULVHZHEV´WKDWZHUHLQWHQGHGWR provide easy-to-use, secure, and personalized sites that may extend to an organization’s employees as well as to its customers and business partners. Enterprise portals evolved to include collabora- tion tools so that customers, business partners, and employees are empowered to maximize their value to the organization. Portals that combine Web communications and thinking inside large enterprises are considered as both a labor-saving and a cost-saving technology. Enterprise portals are also referred to as corporate portals. Some corporate analysts predict that portals spending 759 Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace ZLOOEHRQHRIWKHWRS¿YHDUHDVIRUJURZWKLQWKH Internet technologies sector. BACKGROUND While there are multitudes of enterprise portal deployments, e ach can be assig ned to on e of t h ree distinct groups. These groups, in increasing order RIFRPSOH[LW\DUHFODVVL¿HGDVIXQGDPHQWDOLQ- tegrated, or collaborative (Strauss, 1999; Terra & Gordon, 2002; Moore, 2002; Plumtree Software, 2005; Portals Magazine, 2005). Fundamental Portals Fundamental portals are those that offer a frame- ZRUNZKHUHXVHUVFDQ¿QG:HEDSSOLFDWLRQVIURP a single entry point. They provide very little func- tionality and are essentially a means to connect legacy applications. Portals of this type do not attempt any type of enterprise process integration and typically function as a list of links. Integrated Portals Integrated portals integrate the applications and the delivery of customized, role-based content, while providing access to information across the organization. Integrated portal initiatives in organizations focus on providing access to information and to streamlining information technology and business operations. However, these types of solutions are not able to integrate fully people, processes, content, and applications. Collaborative Portals Collaborative portals integrate users, content, and collaborative tools. Collaboration services such as presence awareness, instant messaging, Web conferencing, and third-party applications in the context of business processes are integrated into the portal. The user of the collaborative portal can tap into different resources throughout the enterprise, leveraging various collaborative tools through a consistent interface. A collaborative portal requires that an enter- prise looks at itself as a collection of business SURFHVVHV¿QDQFLDOPDQDJHPHQWSURGXFWGHYHO- opment, etc.) rather than functional departments (marketing, manufacturing, or human resources) RU VLPSOL¿HG VHJPHQWV EXVLQHVVWRHPSOR\HH or business-to-customer). Collaborative portals offer more than just access to applications and content. The most evolved collaborative portals enable key business processes, appear integrated and personalized for each individual’s roles in the organization, and allow access to people and ex- pertise through collaboration (Plumtree, 2005). FEATURES OF ENTERPRISE PORTALS The features of enterprise portals include (Sribar & Lynn, 2003; Pushmann & Alt, 2004): • Single Touch Point: The portal is the deliv- ery mechanism for all business information services. • Collaboration: Portal users can communi- cate synchronously, through chat or messag- ing, or asynchronously, through e-mail and blogs. • Content and Document Management: Services that support the full lifecycle of document creation and provide mechanisms for authoring, approval, version control, scheduled publishing, indexing, and search- ing. • Personalization: The ability for portal PHPEHUVWRVXEVFULEHWRVSHFL¿FW\SHVRI content and services. Users can customize the look and feel of their environments. 760 Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace • Integration: The connection of functions and data from multiple systems into new components. Figure 1 shows an example of the customized and personalized component of an enterprise portal from Plumtree Software (2005). Through a personalized portal page such as this one, the user is able to access services and content (both static and dynamic), as well as aggregate disparate DSSOLFDWLRQVWKHVHDUHLGHQWL¿HGLQ)LJXUHZLWK heavy arrows and boxes containing explanatory text). Since the enterprise portals are now designed to allow collaboration, a portal’s content (or part of it) should be accessible on multiple platforms such as personal computers, personal digital as- sistants, and cell phones (Portals Community, 2005). Generic portal ecosystem components are shown in Figure 2. The Working of a Portal When a user requests actions, such as searches or information retrieval, the portal server locates and initiates the appropriate gadget. These gadgets perform the requested task and send the results back to the portal server, which formats and sends the reply back to the client. Gadgets can be a simple pass-through to an HTML page or they can be complex applications. Both the portal itself and the gadgets run on a servlet engine inside an HTTP Web server. An HTTP Web server is software that renders and presents HTML pages to browser applications. A servlet engine is a computer program that U X Q V Z LW K L Q D Q + 7 7 3 :H E V HU YHU D QGW D NH V V SH F L ¿F  requests from the Web server, processes them, and then hands them back to the Web server in HTML format for it to render. The open source Apache HTTP Web server (http://httpd.apache.org/) is an example of a Web Figure 1. Plumtree portal page example 761 Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace server. The servlet engine could be the Tomcat (http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html), which is written in Java (http://java.sun.com). Portal Environment The elements of the portal environment are these: • Application Server: An application server provides the underlying development and runtime infrastructure for the portal. Ex- amples of J2EE application servers include Sun ONE, BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere, Oracle 9iAS, and JBoss. Many of the appli- cation server vendors incorporate portals as add-ons to their base product. For example, IBM Websphere Portal Server, Oracle Portal, and BEA Portal are all built on top of the corresponding application server and in some cases are sold as one package. Several of the stand-alone portal products, such as Plumtree, Epicentric, and Corechange, have Java components or are Java based and take advantage of an application server. • Web Server: A Web server works in con- junction with an application server to provide the runtime environment for client requests. The HTTP Web servers used with portals include Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Apache, and so on. When a customer brings up the portal page, the Web browser makes a request of the Web server. The Web server then passes the request to the application server. The portal (and its associated gadgets) runs on top of the ap- plication server. • Database: Most portals have an underlying database (such as Oracle, DB2, Sybase, or SQL Server) that they use to keep track of LQIRUPDWLRQVSHFL¿FWRWKHSRUWDO²VXFKDV users, personalization settings, available Web services/gadgets, and security. This use of the database is in addition to the use of the database by a transactional system (for example, ERP, CRM, or SCM system) Figure 2. Generic portal ecosystem components 762 Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace that a portal might query in order to present DSSOLFDWLRQVSHFL¿FGDWDWRFXVWRPHUV • Taxonomy: $WD[RQRP\LVDFODVVL¿FDWLRQ scheme to organize a collection of informa- tion. Ideally, a taxonomy would take a set of documents and make it easy to browse, search, or otherwise navigate information in which the user is interested. A taxonomy is analogous to a folder structure, with the additional functional components of meta- GDWDIRUGRFXPHQWFODVVL¿FDWLRQDVZHOODV the rules for categorization. Most enterprise portals have a taxonomy for this purpose; some may have automatically generated tax- onomies based on the metadata provided. • Crawler:A crawler is an automated process W K DWU H D G V  L QGH[HV D Q GFODV VL ¿ H VGR F X PH Q W V at a predetermined interval. A Web crawler, for instance, would crawl target Web pages periodically to determine if the content has changed. The content is then indexed into the taxonomy so that customers can easily ¿QG LW 7KH FUDZOHU GRHV QRW QHFHVVDULO\ make another copy of the crawled document; rather, it indexes it by creating a virtual card that describes the document. The card then lives in the portal index. • Metadata Repository: A metadata reposi- tory contains metadata about the content within the portal and the structure of that content. This includes metadata about the taxonomy, as well as metadata for the indi- vidual documents. For example, each docu- ment placed in a folder called Clients might KDYHDPHWDGDWD¿HOGFDOOHG³&OLHQW´ZKLFK would have one or more values. The value RIWKH&OLHQW¿HOGIRUDSDUWLFXODUGRFXPHQW is metadata about that document. • Gadget: This is a user interface for present- ing data and functionality from multiple applications on a single Web page. Gadgets encompass the presentation layer and busi- ness logic. They also tie into back-end data sources and are given different names by vendors (portlets, blocks, Web modules, Web parts). Many portal vendors have gadgets for connecting to enterprise systems (such as SAP) as well as for collaboration, news, and other functions. • Categorization Engine: A categorization engine is used for sorting documents into the folders of taxonomy. The categorization engine may do this based on metadata in the documents, business rules, the content RIWKHGRFXPHQWVHDUFKFULWHULDRU¿OWHUV or some other scheme. • Filters: $¿OWHULVJHQHUDOO\DYDLODEOHLQ a taxonomy to restrict the documents that are admitted into a particular folder or that DUHUHWXUQHGDVSDUWRIDVHDUFK$¿OWHUFDQ be word based (for example, if a document KDVWKHZRUG³,%0´FRQFHSWEDVHGIRU example, if the document is like another document), or rule based (for example, if WKH¿HOGFDOOHG&OLHQWKDVDYDOXHRI,%0 • Index: An index is a collection of informa- tion that allows for fast query and retrieval of information. Within the context of a portal, an index is usually a combination of a full- text index and a metadata repository for the documents/content that are included within the portal. • Virtual Card: Within an index or metadata repository, a virtual card is a description of a single document or piece of content within the portal. The card usually contains infor- mation about where the content physically resides and contains the values of one or PRUHPHWDGDWD¿HOGVDERXWWKDWGRFXPHQW 7KHFDUGLVWKH³SODFHKROGHU´IRUWKHGRFX- ment within the portal. • Web Service: A Web service is a program that accepts and responds to requests over the Internet. Typically, a Web service accepts requests in an XML-based format. The ac- tual format of the request and the response depends on the XML standards that are being used. One such standard is SOAP. There are 763 Web-Enabled Portals for E-Business Workplace public registries and languages—such as UDDI, WSDL—which are used to catalog the different available Web services. A call- ing program can query the UDDI registry WR ¿QG DQ DSSURSULDWH :HE VHUYLFH WKHQ use WSDL to determine which parameters WKHVHUYLFHQHHGVDQG¿QDOO\XVHDFDOOLQJ protocol and XML standard like SOAP to make the call to the Web service. • 8VHU3UR¿OHV ( D F K S R U W D O F R Q W D L Q V D S U R¿OH IRUHDFKRILWVXVHUV7KLVSUR¿OHLVXVHGIRU customization and personalization. Each of the gadgets in a portal has access to this XVHUSUR¿OHDQGFDQXVHLWWRVWRUHSUHIHU- ence information about a user or a class of XVHUV7KLVSUR¿OHGHWHUPLQHVKRZWKHXVHU FRQ¿JXUHVWKHKRPHSDJHRIDSRUWDODQG chooses which gadgets show up and what information they show. • Content Management System: Most enter- prise portals contain a content management system, which allows approved users to submit information into the portal. There is typically an approval process that eventually results in the content becoming available in the correct part of the portal’s taxonomy. A content management system can deal with documents in their original formats (for example, Microsoft Word or PDF) or might contain Web editing features to allow users to author Web pages. • Enterprise Application Integration (EAI): EAI is an umbrella term for all software and services meant to integrate enterprise applications with one another. An EAI layer is needed so that queries can be coordinated, and results consolidated. Given the complexities of each type of ap- plication (for example, sales, manufacturing, VHUYLFHSXUFKDVLQJWKLVFDQEHDGLI¿FXOW and expensive process. A number of vendors have released software that makes this pro- cess much simpler, including Crossworlds, WebMethods, Tibco, NEON, and IBM. EAI impacts the portal because the portal ideally will show consolidated information from multiple back-end systems. On Portal Vendors Portal technology is both infrastructure and a software application. Those who want to imple- ment portals in organizations are faced with various levels of vendor, technology, and budget risk. Moreover, portals, like any information technology purchase in an organization, are re- quired to prove their value. Valuation of portals LVHVSHFLDOO\GLI¿FXOWEHFDXVHWKHSRUWDOPDUNHWLV DOZD\VLQDVWDWHRIÀX[$QH[FHOOHQWVLWHZZZ portalscommunity. com/ (Portals Community, 2005), is highly recommended for those interested i n a n u n b i a s e d v i e w c o n c e r n i n g p o r t a l t e c h n olog y and the portal market. FUTURE TRENDS P o r t a l s o f t w a r e i s m a t u r i n g f r o m a s i m ple i n t e r f a c e for accessing multiple systems to a powerful plat- form for delivering new, composite applications. The survivors in the portal market have grown by incorporating new technologies for content man- agement, collaboration, search, and single sign-on. The result is the emergence of an enterprise-wide working environment on the Web (Plumtree, 2005). This environment may remain open, or may yet become part of application servers, which have begun to offer functionality beyond the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition standard (Pushmann & Alt, 2004). At stake is whether the portal, and the entire enterprise Web, is merely an extension of client-server infrastructure, based on a single type of application server, or an environment that is open in a fundamentally new way. This open- ness is in the interests of any organization that anticipates having to support multiple application servers. For this reason openness will triumph . party applications via connectors and adaptors) and practices. That is, our research project aims to deliver collaborative Web-based applications that work effectively with existing applications. services. It provides an envelope for sending and receiving XML data and documents. Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP): A standard for portals to access and display port- lets that are hosted. information and to streamlining information technology and business operations. However, these types of solutions are not able to integrate fully people, processes, content, and applications. Collaborative