Programming Portlets - An Introduction Using IBM WebSphere Portal

Portal servers deliver rich content, provide collaboration capability, and allow application access that is relevant to an end user via the Internet. A portlet is one small but critical piece of an overall portal composed of many portlets. -Portlets can be an article, like in a magazine, or a column, like in a newspaper. In fact, the possible content presented in any given portlet is limited only by your imagination. Put another way, portlets are like pieces of artwork that developers place into the frames created by IBM WebSphere Portal. In Programming Portlets-the first book to specifically address the topic of programming portlets-you'll learn in detail how to create these reusable components as you examine the various facilities IBM WebSphere Portal offers.

WebSphere Portal Server provides a rich and robust horizontal framework for building portals that can meet the needs of any enterprise. Central to the WebSphere Portal framework is the portlet API. The portlet API provides the necessary life cycle methods that developers can use to facilitate the integration of back-end applications and data. In essence, a portlet is a pluggable component written in Java that runs inside the portal server. Programming Portlets covers the fundamental aspects of the WebSphere portlet API and demonstrates portlet development by example, with working sample portlets throughout the text.

This book is essential reading for every software engineer, architect, programmer, system designer, and portlet developer who is confronted with the task of building a portal for their organization.

With Programming Portlets, you will learn:

• Proper use of JSTL with regard to portlets
• Effective integration of Struts in the portal framework
• Ways of inter-portlet communication
• Creation of portal services
• Internationalization of portlets