Aug. 21, 2003
Rich Lovett chaired the meeting in place of Susan Waters, who was absent.
Webmaster conference
Rich announced that 82 people had signed up for the October webmaster conference. He suggested that it might be
appropriate for the October MAGWeb meeting to be a celebration party after the conference. There also was discussion
about having a luncheon meeting instead. (Postscript: as of Aug. 26, 102 people had registered for the conference.)
WebSphere Portal
Rich introduced Jim Waters of Flax Business Systems. Jim and
two other Flax employees provide Lotus Notes and e-government application development for the City of Kansas City.
Jim gave a demo of WebSphere Portal and answered questions.
Jim said a portal is a central point of access to all of a user's data. It knows who you are once you sign on and
can personalize what you see on the screen. In contrast, a typical web site takes a shotgun approach in which all
users get the information the same way.
Jim said a portal can allow customization as well as personalization. Personalization means that the site can change
the information each user sees based on who they are. For example, users in one part of the city may see different
information than those in another part. Customization allows the user to determine cosmetic items such as screen
colors and layout. It also may allow the user to select some of the links and features that will appear on the
home page.
One portal page can display several applications, or "portlets," simultaneously in different windows.
The portal contains code that lets it pull data from existing databases. Personalization allows the system to present
different portlets to different users. Even Word and other Microsoft Office products can run as portlets. This
makes WebSphere an application server as well as a web site gateway. Running everyday applications as portlets
can save on software license fees.
WebSphere Portal is an IBM product that runs on WebSphere Application Server. Optional add-ons include Sametime,
an instant messaging product, and Quickplace, an interactive, real-time team workspace.
Jim said a portal allows for better security. When a web site has multiple e-gov servers, each one needs a hole
through the firewall to reach internal data, or else the data has to be outside the firewall. A portal can operate
with only one HTTP server outside the firewall, requiring only one hole through the firewall. But it can still
access all the necessary internal data.
Since a portal is entirely Web-based, it can run on numerous operating systems, and the work stations don't have
to run Windows. All they need is a web browser. This can help to avoid viruses, many of which target Windows users.
The same portal can run on your web site and intranet.
A portal doesn't replace your web site, and you don't have to rework your site to make it function with the portal.
The portal only provides a new interface to the site. Web pages can be created the same as before, and if you have
a content management system, it will work as it always did. The portal is an enhancement to the web site, not a
replacement.
WebSphere is sold on a per-user or per-server-processor basis. It also comes in two versions, Enable and Extend.
Enable is the basic portal product. Extend adds Sametime and Quickplace. The basic Enable costs $77 per user on
an intranet. For the Web, it's $30,000 per processor. The basic Extend is $122 per user on an intranet and $47,820
per processor for web sites. These prices are approximate and can be negotiated.
Next meeting
The next MAGWeb meeting will be at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 18,
at MARC.