Best Practices for Applying AJAX to JSR 168 Portlets
January 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment
At Plymouth State University we are just beginning to look into JSR 168 portlets for our institution’s portal. This technology for creating channels is just becoming available with the impending release of Luminis IV in Q1 of this year. In doing my initial research on JSR 168, I turned up this interesting article from Greg Ziebold and Marina Sum written in September of 2006.
From the summary/overview:
A year ago, the article Asynchronous Rendering of Portlet Content With AJAX Technology demonstrated how to apply Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) to portlets. Since then, AJAX has become increasingly popular in the software arena and many new AJAX technologies have emerged. Examples are JavaScript libraries and toolkits, such as the Dojo Toolkit, the Yahoo! UI Library, the Google Web Toolkit, Script.aculo.us, and DHTML Goodies. In addition, new standards bodies like Open AJAX and the Dojo Foundation are key players.
In light of the many developments in the past year and the host of feedback on how to use AJAX in portlets, this article describes several helpful tips and practices on how best to exploit AJAX in portlets that comply with the Java Specification Request (JSR) 168: Portlet Specification.
The article refers to an updated version of the sample, AJAX Portlet Invoice Viewer, from the original article. You can download the binary Web archive (WAR) file. In the near future, this sample will reside in the Open Source Portlet Repository on java.net.
As we are new to JSR 168 and definitely interested in incorporating Ajax with most any channel we create, this seems like a useful guide.
Tags: AJAX, channel, dojo, greg ziebold, jsr 168, jsr168, luminis, luminis IV, Marina Sum, portal, portlet, xml, yahoo ui
Summit 2007 Presentation Proposals
October 11, 2006 | 1 Comment
It’s that time of year again. I’ve updated my bio and tweaked a few of the proposals I’ve submitted in previous years. I’m submitting fewer this year than past years as many of my responsibilities in the past year have swayed away from Luminis, reducing it’s core status in my workload.
My Title: Portal Administrator and Senior Web Developer
My Bio:
Zach Tirrell is from Plymouth State University in northern New Hampshire. Zach is both portal administrator and senior web developer for the institution. The main areas of his concentration revolve around integrating systems and identity management, Luminis has become a perfect enabler of this. He is often looking to get just a bit more out of Luminis than what is delivered. In the past couple years Zach has become increasingly involved with Summit events. At Summit 2005, Zach presented “LDI Implementation Tips and Tricks”. This presentation was repeated at Summit 2006 as well as a new presentation, “Implement and Deploy Banner Channels”, which was voted in the top 5 by attending reviewers. While at Summit 2006, Zach also co-presented “Alumni Are Coming! Luminis ROI”. Finally, he hosted an informal session in the Luminis Developer’s Lounge where he covered statistics tracking and drag and drop channels within Luminis.
Implement and Deploy Banner Channels
Banner 7 comes with a huge pile of exciting new channels. These channels greatly leverage the relationship between Luminis and Banner, however, implementation is complicated and deployment even more so. Banner channels are fantastic, but they need to be rolled out carefully. Plymouth State University has already run this gauntlet, come hear some of the concerns and pitfalls so you can avoid them yourself.
This is a repeat from last year
Collecting Luminis Statistics
By leveraging the underlying UPortal infrastructure, learn how to take advantage of RDBMSStatsRecorder to generate detailed numbers on who is logging in, logging out, how often, and by role. These numbers are supplemented with other third party statistic tracking utilities. You can then use these numbers to better understand how effective your portal strategy is. Tracking user adoption and growth over time becomes essential to decision making about the portal.
Extending SSO - CAS in Luminis
One of the most common WebISO solutions is the Central Authentication Service (CAS) developed by Yale. In Luminis III.2 CAS became available as an installable module. Learn how to get CAS installed, configured, and where it might fit in your organization. See how Plymouth State University has leveraged the phpCAS libraries to CAS’ify all their internally developed PHP web applications as well as a few third-party ones. What’s best, it only takes a couple lines of code!
This topic is for technical audiences
Tags: banner, banner channels, cas, channel, channels, luminis, portal, portal administrator, RDBMSStatsRecorder, single sign on, sso, summit, sungard, sungardhe, web developer, yalecas
Summit 2006 Presentation Proposals
October 3, 2005 | 2 Comments
I finally put together all my material to submit proposals for Summit presentations. I looked back at what we’ve been doing in the portal this year and the following is what I came up with. Overall it’s been a busy year, I was surprised to come up with as many as I did.
My Title: Portal Administrator and Senior Web Developer
My Bio
Zach Tirrell is from Plymouth State University in northern New Hampshire. Zach is both portal administrator and senior web developer for the institution. The main areas of his concentration revolve around integrating systems and identity management, Luminis has become a perfect enabler of this. He is often looking to get just a bit more out of Luminis than what is delivered.
Collecting Stats in Luminis
By leveraging the underlying UPortal infrastructure, learn how to take advantage of RDBMSStatsRecorder to generate detailed numbers on who is logging in, logging out, how often, and by role. You can then use these numbers to better understand how effective your portal strategy is. Tracking user adoption and growth over time becomes essential to decision making about the portal.
This presentation is for technical audiences.
YaleCAS in Luminis
One of the most common WebISO solutions is the Central Authentication Service developed by Yale (YaleCAS). In Luminis III.2 CAS became available as an installable module. Learn how to get YaleCAS installed, configured, and where it might fit in your organization. See how Plymouth State University has leveraged the phpCAS libraries to CAS’ify all their internally developed PHP web applications as well as a few third-party ones. What’s best, it only takes a couple lines of code!
This presentation is for technical audiences.
Luminis and Identity Management
While deploying Luminis, or maybe immediately after, lots of questions arise related to identity management. Are you using a central authentication point like LDAP or Active Directory? How do technologies like CPIP or YaleCAS fit into your authentication scheme? What applications should and can use SSO? Are you centrally managing authorization? Is shibboleth something you should be thinking about? How is your password policy? What’s you level of assurance on accounts you have assigned? All these questions and more will be discussed. Come prepared for lots of crowd participation.
LDI Implementation Tips and Tricks
Plymouth State University is starting to reap the rewards of its integrated campus portal strategy. PSU started its Banner migration in 2001, deployed Campus Platform 3 with its legacy SIS in 2002, publicly deployed Banner in 2003, and in 2004 with the migration to Luminis and implementation of LDI for eLearning, has finally reached “critical mass.” Luminis provides the infrastructure and LDI provides the glue that connects Banner, WebCT, the library, and other services. The presentation details Plymouth State University’s implementation and discusses the problems and solutions we faced along the way, with an emphasis on LDI and Luminis. Plymouth State has used this technology to realize the benefits of a unified digital campus.
This is a repeat from last year
Implement and Deploy Banner Channels
Banner 7 comes with a huge pile of exciting new channels. These channels greatly leverage the relationship between Luminis and Banner, however, implementation is complicated and deployment even more so. Banner channels are fantastic, but they need to be rolled out carefully. Plymouth State University has already run this gauntlet, come hear some of the concerns and pitfalls so you can avoid them yourself.
Tags: active directory, banner, campus portal, cas, channel, channels, identity management, integrate, integrated, integration, ldap, luminis, php, plymouth state university, portal, sct, sso, summit, sungard, sungardsct, tirrell, webiso, yalecas, Zach Tirrell, Zachary Tirrell