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Portals in Higher Ed. Dan Oberst, Princeton University. “ I don't know that I can define it, but I know one when I see it... ”. What is a Portal?. Apologies to Justice Stewart.
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Portals in Higher Ed. Dan Oberst, Princeton University
“I don't know that I can define it, but I know one when I see it...” What is a Portal? Apologies to Justice Stewart
Enterprise portals provide a centralized, full-service starting point that allows companies to promote, deploy, and manage a broad range of applications, services, content and commerce offerings to web constituents. Epicentric White Paper
EDUCAUSE Review Articles • July/August 2000 • Portals in Higher Education • Michael Looney and Peter Lyman • Institutional Information Portals • Carl Jacobson
Information Evolution? • CWIS • Gopher • WWW • Push • Portals • ???
Gartner: Portal Best Practices • Be sure business problem or goal is well understood • Understand requirements w/o over-analyzing them • Max Hype Shields: • Portals - second-most hyped item in all IT. • Don’t underestimate effort and cost of deployment G. Phifer COM-11-3816
Questions to ask about portals: • Who is the portal for? • Students • Staff • Faculty • Associates (other researchers, govt, industry) • Alumni • Parents • Prospective Students • General Public
Business Case/Support Model? • May vary by constituency • Initial costs • On going? • Self-funding? • Marketing expense?
How does architecture fit in? • Hardware/OS Platform • Web Server • Application Server • Development Environment • Database engine • Authentication/Authorization • Legacy & New application Integration
(Inevitable?) Vertical Portals • (CourseInfoPeopleSoft, MySAP, etc.). • “Tab” or link on enterprise portal? • Encompassed by the enterprise portal? • Replace/become the enterprise portal? • Compete with enterprise portal • fragmenting population, confusing users).
Princeton Investigation • Two Pronged: • JA-SIG - (administrative applications portal) • http://asigdev.princeton.edu:82/portal/ • Broad revamp of web site: • Content Management (XML-based e.g. (worldweb.net) Expressroom I/O) • Personalized/customized Web Site based on role • Separate Outsourced effort for Alumni • PCI (Publishing Concepts, LLC)
Evaluation • http://web.princeton.edu/sites/es/wsg/portal/ • Reviewed 29 vendors/portals • Narrow to 3 to evaluate: • Epicentric/GoCampus • Hummingbird • Sequoia
Epicentric/GoCampus • Go Campus - Higher Ed Consortium/ASP • Community of interest/shared development • Hosted Service by GoCampus • Epicentric Portal Technology • WebLogic application server engine (JSP) • Content Building Blocks (“clips”/XML) • Application connectivity • GoCampus operation suspended
Hummingbird • XML-based server rendered in HMTL • E-clips “webscrape” content • Tools to pipe E-clipse to customize content,pages • Text search, retrieval, spider engine • Role-based access model • Prototype pages up
Sequoia • XML-based content access & delivery • plugins for HTML, POP • MS Message queues to manage requests • Scale through modularity • COM interfaces • Non-trivial implementation (infrastructure overhead)
Evaluation Plan • Deploy simple portal • Demonstrate user access/customization • Implement business function • e.g. Employee benefits • Meet with constituent groups • Evaluate cost/benefit