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Portals. IST 421 Spring 2004 Lecture 3. Enterprise Information Portals. Portals – doorway to a focused set of resources either internal or external Targeted for a specific audience Employees, customers, suppliers
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Portals IST 421 Spring 2004 Lecture 3
Enterprise Information Portals • Portals – doorway to a focused set of resources either internal or external • Targeted for a specific audience • Employees, customers, suppliers • Serve as a single coherent view of information aggregated from different sources
Enterprise Information Portals • Back Office Systems - ERP, financials, human resources, engineering, process automation/workflow, project management • Front Office Systems – sales force automation, customer relationship management, help desk, marketing automation • Personal Productivity Systems – word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, contact manager, personal information manager
Enterprise Information Challenges • Managed data • Legacy systems, proprietary systems • Disconnected islands of automation • Unmanaged data • Ad-hoc productivity tools • Chaotic access and exchange • Restricted publication rights
Enterprise Information Portals • A system to manage access to information • Adopt a standard for transmitting and representing data using XML • Content must be abstract and kept separate from rendition • Rendition – the file format that contains the actual data and the description of the format
Enterprise Information Portals • Primary advantage is that there is no need to integrate systems directly between companies or within trading communities • Connect to each system through a point of integration • User interface, database, application server
Enterprise Information Portals • Today, more information flows through user interfaces than automatically through back-end integration
Portal Advantages • Supports a noninvasive approach • Faster to implement than real-time information exchange • Technology is mature with many portal-oriented applications to learn from
Portal Disadvantages • Information does not flow in real time • Requires human interaction • Information must be abstracted through another application logic layer – complexity issue • Security is a concern when data is being extended to users over the Web
Portal Evolution • Single-System Portals • Single enterprise systems that have their user interfaces extended to the Web • Multiple Enterprise System Portals • Multiple enterprise systems information is funneled through a single Web-enabled application
Portal Evolution • Trading Community Portals • Multiple enterprise system portal is extended to include systems within many companies – trading community portal or digital exchange
Portal Architecture • Made up of components: • Web clients • Web servers • Database servers • Back-end applications • Application servers
Portal Server Architecture From The XML Handbook by Goldfarb and Prescod, Prentice Hall PTR, 2001.
Portal Architecture • Web Clients – any device able to run a Web browser and display HTML and graphics • PC, PDA’s, cell phones • Web Servers – file servers able to convert information into HTML and deliver to a Web browser using HTTP
Portal Architecture • Database Servers – work as a traditional client/server architecture • Back-End Applications – mix of applications such as SAP, custom applications, client/server applications • Portals gather appropriate information from these systems and present it to the user interface
Portal Architecture • Application Servers – provide a middle layer between the back-end applications, databases, and the Web server.
Portal Servers • Three requirements for portal servers: • Performance: reliability, availability, scalability • Content distribution to PC’s, thin clients, mobile devices such as phones and PDA’s; personalization • Business process integration
Portal Server Architecture • Personalization • Content delivery agents (CDA) is a program or script that creates a window for providing a data source • Each user is assigned a “role” which specifies a collection of pages, CDS’s, and a default theme • User may change the layout of any page, change the color and background images of the desktop