tion Archive, and automatically deploying the Portal Appli
Contents
1. 35 JAVAEAR AS Admin KS met yaa Ee Hepper et a Introducing the Portlet Specificiaiton Part 1 published on JavaWorld Aug 2003 retrieved online from http www javaworld com javaworld jw 08 2003 jw 0801 portel html on Dec 11 2008 BEA WebLogic Portal Deploying Portal Applicaitons Version 8 1 with Service Pack 2 document Revised Feb 2004 pp 1 52 Endrel et al IBM WebSphere V4 0 Advanced Edition Handbook chapter 20 Packaging and deploying Web services Chapter 19 Deploying an application page published on Mar 2002 pp 687 738 Continued Primary Examiner Tuan Q Dam Assistant Examiner Zheng Wei 74 Attorney Agent or Firm Raymond Szeto Hoffman Warnick LLC 57 ABSTRACT The present invention provides a system and method for developing a Portal Application by creating a Portal Applica tion Archive and automatically deploying the Portal Appli cation Archive into a Portal Server Application by using a Portal Application Archive specific deployment mechanism The Portal Application Archive represents an entity which includes an assembly of all required application components forming a coherent Portal Application and an application component assembly descriptor which specifies how the single application components need to be assembled to pro vide the complete Portal Application on the Portal Server Application 12 Claims 10 Drawing Sheets Portal2. Develop application component 2 2 Develop application component Develop application component 4 4 Develop application component 5 Develop utility Service 6 Package application component 1 Package application component 2 Package application component 3 Package application component 4 Delivered Portal Application Package application component 5 consists of 5 separate x application components Package utility Service utility service FIG 1B Prior Art U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 3 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 Start num 1 Install application component 1 Install application component 2 2 RR 3 Install application component 3 Install application component 4 4 Install application cmponent 5 Use Portal Layout Customizer 6 and arrange layout of the installed application components manually Define inter application communication between application component 2 and 5 8 Install utility service Install user interface Design theme 10 Completion Define dynamic assembly rule FIG 1C Prior Art U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 4 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 Start ew 1 Develop application component 2 Develop application component 2 3 Develop application component 3 Develop application component 4 Develop application 5 5 Develop utility Service 6 40 Application component assembly descriptor 35 Export an Application Package including an application component ass
3. individual pieces or so called Portlets At the customer s site Portal Server Application each of the required Portlets of the Portal Application needs to be installed and assembled individually one after each other The administrator must perform all these installation steps for each Portlet and also finally define how the Portlets should be arranged in the web site layout The installation of complex Portal Applications becomes a very challenging and difficult task This problem becomes more significant as the features of Portals increase Portal Applications which are developed for that platform take advantage of new capabilities and their complexity is growing as well Modern Portal Applications comprise more than just a couple of Portlets Further compo nents can be added to produce even more sophisticated J2EE applications A complex vertical J2EE application comprises manifold base J2EE component types as well as many Portal 20 25 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 2 specific components types which are all sewed together to a coherent Portal Application produced by a large application development team SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Itis object ofthe present invention to provide a new system and method for developing a Portal Application and for deploying the Portal Application into a Portal Server Appli cation environment that avoids the disadvantages of the prior art In this patent application all components which
4. A computer program product stored on a computer usable medium comprising computer readable program means for causing a computer to perform the method accord ing to claim 1 8 Tooling Software for developing a Portal Application stored on at least one computer useable medium the Tooling Software comprising means for developing single application components wherein the single application components include port lets each portlets containing a specific function means for developing an application component assembly descriptor which specifies a desired layout how the single application components need to be assembled and includes interaction information of the single applica tion components to provide the Portal Application on the Portal Server Application environment wherein the application component assembly descriptor includes a topology schema definition the topology schema defi nition including an application tree that lists and 10 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 12 describes all the single application components a layout tree that defines the desired layout by defining which windows application components are inserted into and a navigation tree that defines navigation elements that map the application components to a particular window in the desired layout means for storing the single application components and the application component assembly descriptor together as a Portal Application Archive into
5. Framework LL E E Portal Server EAR 65 65 US 7 716 665 B2 Page2 OTHER PUBLICATIONS John Methot WebLogic Workshop Internals WebLogic Workshop 8 1 Feb 17 2004 pp 1 31 European Search Report Application No 05105889 9 2201 pp 1 4 Completion Date Apr 5 2006 Anonymous Introduction to JSR 168 The Java Portlet Specifica tion Jul 23 2004 pp 1 18 XP002375680 http developer sun com Anonymous Jetspeed Portal Structure Markup Feb 17 2004 pp 1 13 XP002375681 http web archive org web 20040217104646 http jakarata apache org jetspeed site psml html R Lynn Hello World the simplest portlet for WebSphere Portal V 5 Part 2 Rendering with JSP Mar 31 2004 pp 1 11 XP002375682 http www 128 ibm com developerworks websphere library techarticles 0403 lynn2 0403_ lynn2 ht cited by examiner U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 1 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 Dynamic Assembly Rule Only for Customers who own stocks Application 3 e g Account Info Application 1 e g Stock User Interface Design theme Access Control Defs Roles Utility Service Access Control Setting Only for Elite Customer Group Application 5 e g Mortgage Calculator Inter Application Communication FIG 1A U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 2 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 Start NE 1 Develop application component 1
6. The Portal Server Application configuration can be manipulated to reflect the desired layout and interac tion of the provided application components The inventive deployment process is shown in more detail in FIG 3D FIG 3A shows an example ofa complex Portal Application developed by means of a Tooling Software and deployed by a deployment mechanism of the Portal Server Application according to the present invention FIG 3A shows an example with three different Portal applications collaboration 12 mail calendar 13 and finance 14 The finance portal application 14 includes a set of busi ness process definitions 21 JCA connectors 20 to a backend system documents 22 describing the application for users page definitions 16 URL mappings 18 and templates 17 The Portal Applications pages are made available in the Portal Server Application under the URLs defined in the URL map pings 18 The contained dynamic assembly module 19 for business process pages fills in dynamic pages in a placeholder node in the Pages amp Navigation Topology depending on the current state of business processes defined in the business process definitions The contained application Portlets 15 allow the creating and processing of new process instances They can display the contained documents for help or use the contained connectors to access backend systems Some ofthe contained Portlets are for administration of the Portal Appli cation Within a Portal Applica
7. different Portal Server Application components like the aggregation 91 the portal configuration 92 or the Portlet container 93 Within a J2EE environment Portal Application Archives 35 will be packaged as Java EAR files As mentioned above the Portal Application Archive 35 generated by the Portal Tooling Software 30 or manually will be compliant to the J2EE specification and provide all necessary information required by the standard Therefore the EAR i e Portal Application Archive 35 can be deployed on any J2EE compliant Application Server 60 Nevertheless a standard Application Server 60 AS would ignore the additional information such as the XML application component assembly descriptor file 40 and would not be able to determine how to assemble the various appli cation components 70 80 to the desired Portal Application properly For this purpose additional deployment logic AS Deployment 68 needs to be provided into the Application Server 60 This is described below The controller of the existing Application Server Deploy ment API known as AppDeploymentController accepts an arbitrary J2EE EAR file as input performs basic validation for J2EE specification compliance and then creates a sequence of tasks that need to be performed for deployment of the given EAR The sequence of tasks can be extended pro grammatically to perform additional specific deployment logic Such an additional task will be used to evaluate the applicat
8. each other The administra tor must define all these installation steps and also finally define how the Portlets should be arranged on the web site layout The installation of complex Portal Application becomes a very challenging and difficult task FIG 1B shows a prior art development process of a Portal Application such as that shown in FIG 1A Each application component 1 5 is developed and pack aged individually Typically each of these packages is repre sented as a separate file e g a WAR file The information which defines how the individual appli cation components need to be assembled by the administrator at the customer s site into a Portal Application is normally provided by a user manual FIG 1C shows a prior art deployment process of a Portal Application into a Portal Server Application environment In today s Portal Server Application environment the administrator would have to install each application compo nent 1 5 individually After installation he has to customize the Portal Application by manually arranging the application components 1 5 as recommended by the application devel oper Additional deployment steps could be the installation of certain services or the manual definition of interactions between application components FIG 2A shows the basic development process of a Portal Application as shown in FIG 1A according to the present invention The present invention teaches that all individual applica t
9. make up a Portal Application are covered by the term application com ponents Such application components may be for instance individual Portlet Applications e g embedded as WAR Files Code XML Layout Design e g Themes amp Skins Portlet Filters Code XML Access Control Definitions and Roles XML Dynamic Assembly Modules Conditions as special case e g Code XML Page Navigation Definitions e g XML URL Mappings e g XML Documents e g XML Metadata binary Enterprise Java Beans JCA Con nectors e g embedded as JAR Files Servlets e g embed ded as WAR Files Portlet Utility Services Included Web Services Inter Application Communication Definitions e g Click 2 Action and JSF Components The present invention provides a system and method for developing a Portal Application by creating a Portal Applica tion Archive and automatically deploying the Portal Appli cation Archive into a Portal Server Application using a Portal Application Archive specific deployment mechanism The Portal Application Archive represents an entity which includes an assembly of all required application components forming a coherent Portal Application and additionally an application component assembly descriptor which specifies how the single application components need to be assembled into the complete Portal Application on the Portal Server Application environment The Portal Application Archive is provided to the
10. oueul uoniuyeq MO 4 SS8001q sseuisng sobDeg 00Jd sseuisng JO quiassy oiueu q ejejduue 9oueut J Sjejuod 99oueulJ 1ojduosep Ajqwasse jueuoduuoo uorneoiddy AIU91V uoneoiddy JEHOd oe JeEmMYoS Buijoo jJu uido A q uoneoiddy Ov Ge U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 8 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 Portal Application Archive Application Component 1 AC1 Application Component 2 AC2 FIG 3C 716 665 B2 US 7 Sheet 9 of 10 May 11 2010 U S Patent V3 1SA19S EHOd ga euod 08 OZ ayloads Sv S9 S9 NV3VAVFP yuawAojdag uoneoiddy jeuaod St 716 665 B2 ZS US 7 Sheet 10 of 10 2010 gt May 11 U S Patent v 9l US 7 716 665 B2 1 SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEVELOPING PORTAL APPLICATIONS AND FOR AUTOMATICALLY DEPLOYING PORTAL APPLICATIONS INTO A PORTAL SERVER APPLICATION BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1 Field of the Invention The present patent application relates to a system and method for developing Portal Applications and for automati cally deploying Portal Applications into a Portal Server Application 2 Background of the Invention A Portal Server Application provides a flexible framework to produce very complex web sites with very little effort The basic functional units of a Portal Server Application are Port lets Portlets can be considered as buildin
11. tree lists and describes all application com ponents which are used by the Portal Application Application components can be specified in a hierarchi cal order in that tree 55 The layout tree defines the layouts which can be used by the Portal Application 57 Layouts can be included in other layouts Layouts specify windows in which application components can be inserted The navigation tree defines the navigation hierarchy which the application exposes 56 This is done by defining navigation elements which map the given application components to particular window in the available lay outs The following list details the elements which are defined in the Topology Schema Definition Topology Description 55 56 57 This is the root element of the topology description It includes the application title description version unique name and its prerequisites This element also references the application tree layout tree as well as the navigation elements which combine application compo nents and layouts Application Tree 55 This is the root Element of Application Tree which describes all application components This element provides a title description and unique name An application tree can reference other sub application trees or directly one or more application elements ApplicationElement The application element describes an application compo nent with its properties Besides title description and unique name a resou
12. Portal Server environment and is automati cally deployed into the Portal Server Application environ ment using a Portal Application Archive specific deployment mechanism The deployment mechanism evaluates the appli cation component assembly descriptor information and applies that information to the deployment process The present invention allows the development of complete Portal Applications including pages Portlets communication chan nels between Portlets etc that can be deployed either out of the box or serve as a template that gets further customized at deployment time BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The above as well as additional objectives features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent in the following detailed written description The novel features of the invention are set forth in the appended claims The invention itself however as well as a preferred mode of use further objectives and advantages thereof will be best understood by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein FIG 1A shows an example of the structure of a Portal Application FIG 1B shows a prior art development process of a Portal Application FIG 1C shows a prior art deployment process of a Portal Application US 7 716 665 B2 3 FIG 2A shows the basic development process of a Portal Application according to the pres
13. US007716665B2 az United States Patent 10 Patent No US 7 716 665 B2 Buehler et al 45 Date of Patent May 11 2010 54 SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEVELOPING 2005 0257217 Al 11 2005 Woollen a 717 177 PORTAL APPLICATIONS AND FOR 2006 0020908 A1 1 2006 Jain etal veces 717 101 AUTOMATICALLY DEPLOYING PORTAL APPLICATIONS INTO A PORTAL SERVER APPLICATION OTHER PUBLICATIONS 75 Inventors Dieter Buehler Tuebingen DE Stefan Hepper Boeblingen DE Thomas Schaeck Achern DE Thomas Stober Boeblingen DE 73 Assignee International Business Machines Corporation Armonk NY US Notice Subject to any disclaimer the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U S C 154 b by 1077 days 21 Appl No 11 189 565 22 Filed Jul 26 2005 65 Prior Publication Data US 2006 0036993 A1 Feb 16 2006 30 Foreign Application Priority Data Aug 16 2004 EP eee 04103922 51 Int CI G06F 9 445 G06F 9 44 2006 01 G06F 15 16 2006 01 52 U S CL inm 717 75 717 177 719 328 719 329 709 250 58 Field of Classification Search None See application file for complete search history 56 References Cited U S PATENT DOCUMENTS 2006 01 6 892 382 B1 6 986 135 B2 7 165 249 B2 2003 0172129 Al 5 2005 Hapner et al 717 174 1 2006 Leathers et al 1 2007 Potter et al 9 2003 Moses et al 709 219
14. a repository and means for providing the Portal Application Archive to a deploying mechanism of the Portal Server environment for automatically deploying the application components directly into respective parts of the Portal Server Appli cation environment by using the deploying mecha nism s Application Program Interfaces APIs to prop erly handle the single application components according to the desired layout and interaction information included in the application component assembly descriptor 9 Tooling Software according to claim 8 wherein the Portal Application Archive is provided to the Portal Applica tion environment as a packaged single file a packaged subset of correlated files or in a database record 10 Tooling Software according to claim 9 wherein the single file is a Java EAR file 11 A method of deploying a Portal Application on a Portal Server the method comprising providing the Portal Application as a Portal Application Archive to a Portal Server Application environment including the Portal Server wherein the Portal Applica tion Archive includes all application components in machine readable code for forming the Portal Applica tion wherein the all application components include portlets each portlet containing a specific function and an application component assembly descriptor in machine readable code which specifies a desired layout of how the application components need to be assembled and includes
15. component assembly descriptor XML file 40 Portal specific tasks are invoked to register the application components 70 80 within the Portal Server Application 90 and perform the necessary Portal setup and administration steps automatically The dif ferent application components 70 80 in the Portal Applica tion Archive 35 influence the different parts of the Portal Server Application 90 The application components 70 80 plug into different Portal Server Application 90 components like the aggregation the portal configuration or the Portlet container 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 8 The Portal specific tasks which are added include Instantiate Portlets Resolve external references Apply Themes Skins Add pages to the page hierarchy Define Page Layout Setup access control settings map users to roles and Connect Portlets using Click 2 Action wiring Usage of Portlets within Portal Applications Portlets along with Pages are the basic building blocks of Portal Applications they provide the sub units of user expe rience that are then aggregated by the Portal Application to provide the final user experience Portlets are packaged into Portal Applications Portal Applications are similar to J2EE web applications except they make use of additional inter faces that make it easier to aggregate Portlets onto a single Page as well as re use Portlet applications and individual Portlets on many Pages wi
16. eholder into which actual content can be placed into a layout such content can be either A reference to another layout element which is embed ded into the window of the given layout element A static reference to an application entity which is placed into the window as part of the layout definition An empty spot indicating that this window is free to be used by a navigation element using the given layout element Each navigation element using this layout element can specify individually which application entity should be placed into this spot Navigation Element 56 Navigation elements are nested and resemble the naviga tion tree which the application exposes to the user Each navigation tree can have one or more sub navigation elements The referenced navigation content within the navigation element specifies how content is placed into the used layouts The layout element as well as Title description and parameters are specified within the Navigation element Navigation Content The navigation content is used by the navigation element to map content application entities into a particular lay out For this purpose a particular application entity and a corresponding window within the given layout are ref erenced The application entity will show up in that layout window when the Portal Application is dis played The invention claimed is 1 A method for automatically deploying a Portal Applica tion into a Portal Server Ap
17. embly descriptor which can be generated automatically by the tooling software Completion Delivered Application Package consists of 1 single complex Portal Application 50 which embedds the individual appl utility service Application component assembly descriptor 40 FIG 2A U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 5 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 Start Automatically installing Portal Application Archive into the Portal Server in one step Completion FIG 2B U S Patent May 11 2010 Sheet 6 of 10 US 7 716 665 B2 15 16 Finance Finance Pages amp Nav Portlets Topology URL Mappings Finance Template Collabo Mail ration Calendar Finance Portal Applicat ion Finance 18 19 Application 2o Portal Portal Applicat Applicati ion on Dynamic JCA ip ed for Connector usiness to Back End Proc Pages Portal Server Business Process Flow Definition Application Server 21 22 60 FIG 3A US 7 716 665 B2 Sheet 7 of 10 May 11 2010 U S Patent sjueuinooq puq joeg 0 Joyoauu0D vor sBuidde Tan Bojodo Ae 9 sobed eoueul4 uoniujgeg NO d ss 501d sseuisng sabed 001g sseuisng JO A quiassy aiweuAq ojejduuo eoueul4 S H d ooueulJ uonnoox3 uoneoijddy Euod ge 9l4 jueuuAojdaq Se Sjueuunoo j pu xoeg oi 10j989uu02 vor s6uiddeW
18. ent invention FIG 2B shows the basic deployment process of a Portal Application into a Portal Server according to the present invention FIG 3A shows an example of a Portal Application that is developed and deployed by the present invention FIG 3B shows an embodiment of the development and deployment process of a Portal Application as shown in FIG 3A according to the present invention FIG 3C shows the result of the inventive development process according to FIG 3B FIG 3D shows an implementation of a deployment process in a Portal Server Application according to the present inven tion and FIG 4 shows an example of the content of an application component assembly descriptor which is part ofthe inventive Portal Archive DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION FIG 1A shows an example of a complex Portal Applica tion The Portal Application e g an Online Banking Appli cation includes multiple Portlets such as an Account Portlet Stock Price Portlet Stock Purchase Portlet Email Portlet Loan Portlet Mortgage Portlet etc Typically these Portlets can be developed and provided by the application developer as part of a consistent application However the application developer cannot ship the applica tion as a single coherent unit to the customer Instead he needs to ship the application as individual Portlets At the custom er s side each of the required Portlets needs to installed and assembled individually one after
19. g bricks to create complex web sites with sophisticated features The Portal Server Application aggregates the output of the individual Portlets to an output which can be rendered in a browser This aggregation of content is a key feature of Portal Server Appli cations since it integrates the user interface UT of indepen dent Portlets nicely without the need to write any integration code Each Portlet is a standalone unit of code which gets com piled packaged and installed independently This is very advantageous when integrating Portlets Content from very different Providers into a homogeneous web site There is virtually no integration effort The administrator of the Web Server installation will install each desired Portlet individu ally and arrange the layout of the Portlet when designing the web site A disadvantage of this concept arises when a complex Portal Application comprises more than one Portlet For instance an Online Banking Application could have many multiple Portlets for example an Account Portlet a Stock Price Portlet a Stock Purchase Portlet Email Portlet a Loan Portlet and a Mortgage Portlet see FIG 1A Typically these Portlets can be developed and provided by the application developer as part of a consistent Portal Appli cation Unfortunately the Portal Application developer can not ship the Portal Application as a single coherent unit to his customers Instead he needs to ship his Portal Application as
20. interaction information of the application components to provide the Portal Application on the Portal Server Application environment wherein the application component assembly descriptor includes a topology schema definition the topology schema defi nition including an application tree that lists and describes all application components a layout tree that defines the desired layout by defining which windows application components are inserted into and a naviga tion tree that defines navigation elements that map the application components to a particular window in the desired layout and means for automatically deploying the application compo nents directly into respective parts of the Portal Server by using Application Program Interfaces APIs to prop erly handle the all application components according to the desired layout and interaction information included in the application component assembly descriptor 12 The method according to claim 11 further including an Application Server on which the Portal Server Application environment runs wherein the means for deploying the Portal Application is part of the Application Server
21. ion component assembly descriptor 40 and perform the necessary steps to deploy Portal Applications The AppDeploymentController instance is used by admin istrative clients that provide application installation capabil ity to the Portal Server Application 90 It reads an EAR file and creates a sequence of AppDeploymentTasks which specify the data that needs to be collected from the end user in order to install the EAR file The controller class has the following APIs among oth ers class AppDevelopmentController public String getAppDeploymentTaskNames public AppDeploymentTask getFirstTask public AppDeploymentTask getNextTask public AppDeploymentTask getTaskByName String taskName US 7 716 665 B2 7 The APIs of AppDeploymentController class are docu mented by AS 60 According to the AS 60 specification a client application needs to 1 create an instance of AppDeploymentController using AppManagementFactory and passing in an EAR file 2 iterate over the tasks created by AppDeploymentCon troller by calling getFirst and getNext methods 3 present the task data to the end user and collects neces sary data input by the user 4 set the data back into the tasks and saves the AppDe ploymentController instance 5 call getAppDeploymentSavedResults API on the con troller to get options and calls installApplication API on AppManagement MBean passing in the EAR file and the options To deploy the Porta
22. ion components 1 5 are stored and or packaged together as an entity e g a single Java EAR File a set of correlated files a database record etc which includes all individual appli cation components 1 5 forming a coherent Portal Applica tion The Tooling Software defines meta information which includes interactions between the application components 1 5 as well as the desired layout of the entire Portal Applica 20 30 40 45 50 60 65 4 tion Based on this meta information the Tooling Software can generate a machine readable application component assem bly descriptor 40 for the entire Portal Application and pack age it together with the application components 1 5 as an entity 35 called a Portal Application Archive The content of the application component assembly descriptor 40 is shown in more detail in FIG 4 FIG 2B shows the basic deployment process of a Portal Application as shown in FIG 1A according to the present invention The present invention makes all prior art deployment steps obsolete The entire Portal Application which is represented by the Portal Application Archive 35 is installed automati cally in one step The meta information included in the appli cation component assembly descriptor 40 being part of the Portal Application Archive 35 can be evaluated by the Portal Server Application deployment mechanism Based on that information the necessary deployment steps can be triggered automatically
23. l specific enhancements provided by the EAR i e Portal Application Archive 35 Portal Server 90 needs to implement its own Task Provider Portal Server 90 uses API s in the Applications Server s deployment process 60 to properly handle all Portal specific application compo nents while the base J2EE application components are handled by the Application Server 60 The Portal specific task provider can integrate additional deployment steps by imple menting the interface AppDeploymentTaskProvider package com ibm websphere management application public class AppManagementExtensions This interface is implemented by the task providers that want o add extra tasks to the app deployment preparation of ear file process on the client side xj public interface AppDeploymentTaskProvider per Manipulates the list of task info objects that are used during creation of AppDeploymentController instance The vector contains a set of default tasks to begin with param taskInfo Vector that contains the task info objects param deploymentInfo The AppDeploymentInfo instance that contains information about the archive being deployed param prefs The preferences where you can specify locale default binding info etc public void provideClientDeploymentTasks Vector taskInfo AppDeploymentInfo deploymentInfo Hashtable prefs throws AppDeploymentException Based on the information in the application
24. n tree that lists and describes all application com ponents a layout tree that defines the desired layout by defining which windows application components are inserted into and a navigation tree that defines naviga tion elements that map the application components to a particular window in the desired layout and automatically deploying the application components into respective parts of the Portal Server Application envi ronment according to the desired layout and interaction information included in the application component assembly descriptor 2 The method according to claim 1 wherein the applica tion component assembly descriptor is a XML descriptor file 3 The method according to claim 1 wherein the applica tion component assembly descriptor further includes base schema definitions and security schema definitions 4 The method according to claim 1 wherein the Portal Application Archive is provided as a Java EAR file a set of correlated files or database record 5 The method according to claim 1 wherein the deploy ment mechanism is controlled by the Application Server on which the Portal Server Application runs 6 The method according to claim 1 wherein the deploy ment mechanism is configured to instantiate application com ponents resolve external references apply themes skins add pages to a page hierarchy define page layout set up access control settings map users roles and connect application components 7
25. n which the Portal Server 90 runs e g IBM Websphere Portal must be able to import Portal Application Archives 35 and must automatically deploy the included application components 15 22 as described in the application com ponent assembly descriptor file 40 For example this deployment into a running Portal Server Application environment 90 can be done by using the Application Server deployment IBM WebSphere Portal Server 90 uses APIs in the Applications Server s 60 deployment process to properly handle all Portal specific application components while the base J2EE application compo nents are handled by the Application Server Different application components 15 22 in the Portal Application Archive 35 influence the different parts of the Portal Server 90 The deployed application components 15 22 plug into different Portal Server Application compo nents like the aggregation the Portal configuration or the Portlet Container not shown The overall Portal Application development and deploy ment process is shown in the FIG 3B Portal Application Development Process A Tooling Software 30 for Portal Application 50 must enhance the scope of a Portal Application according the present invention Instead of developing individual Portlets each project can include multiple application components 15 22 which can be developed independently as individual pieces of a Portal Application 50 In addition to existing tooling functionality the relati
26. navigation and layout parts that are needed in order to provide useful portal applications FIG 4 shows an example of an application component assembly descriptor file resulting from the inventive devel opment process of a Portal Application The application component assembly descriptor file 40 is preferably based on several XSD Schema definitions Base Schema Definition 54 Describes the basic elements which are used in the other schema definitions below Topology Schema Definition Describes all resources J2EE references and the applica tion topology including the layout i e Page layout 57 navigation trees 56 Portlets 55 Security Schema Definition 53 Describes security related aspects such as application roles and their access control rights Base Schema Definition 54 The base schema definition specifies basic elements which are used in the other two schema definitions These elements include US 7 716 665 B2 9 Title A friendly name of an entity to be exposed to the program mer or user Description The description element provides a NLS enabled text Parameter A set of name value pairs which allow to attach custom ized attributes to an entity nlsRef A reference to a file which can map localized strings Version String An identifier to specify the version of an entity The Topology description schema comprises three parallel trees 55 56 57 which are linked to each other The application
27. onship interaction between different application components 15 22 of a complex Portal Application 50 needs to be programmable as well The Tooling Software 30 must also provide a layout editor not shown which allows defining of the layout of the Portal Application 50 and arranging its application components 15 22 as desired The developed application components 15 22 must be stored within the Tooling Software s internal repository as a unit not shown It is important to emphasize that it is not sufficient to only store the developed code of the individual application components 15 22 Additionally the pro grammed relationship interaction between the application components 15 22 as well as the defined layouts must also be stored together with the actual code For that purpose it is suggested that the Tooling Software 30 uses the application component assembly descriptor file 35 to define how the various application components 15 22 are assembled into a coherent Portal Application 50 The application component assembly descriptor file 35 provides meta information e g in XML that describes the Portal Application 50 and its topology The file can be considered as the table of content of a Portal Application 50 and also describes how to assemble and arrange the application components 15 22 The structure and content of the application component assembly descrip tor file 35 will be described in a more detail with respect to FIG 4 FIG 3C
28. plication environment wherein the Portal Application is provided to the Portal Server Appli cation environment as a Portal Application Archive which includes all application components in machine readable code for forming the Portal Application wherein the all appli cation components include portlets each portlet containing a specific function and the Portal Application Archive also includes an application component assembly descriptor in machine readable code which specifies how the application components need to be assembled to provide the Portal Appli cation on the Portal Server Application environment the method comprising providing the Portal Application Archive to a deployment mechanism within the Portal Server Application envi US 7 716 665 B2 11 ronment which is able to directly deploy the Portal Application Archive into the Portal Server Application environment by using the deployment mechanism s Application Program Interfaces APIs to properly handle the all application components evaluating the application component assembly descriptor included in the Portal Application Archive by means of the deployment mechanism to determine a desired lay out of how the application components need to be assembled and interaction information of all the appli cation components wherein the application component assembly descriptor includes a topology schema defini tion the topology schema definition including an appli catio
29. rce link element references the binary code e g a WAR file Parameter name value pairs can be used to provide application specific infor mation Application Component Type This type lists all possible application element types Portletdefinition Portletentity wire Portletservice service skin theme label urlLink tile any Resource Link This element references the actually binary code of an application component e g a WAR file UID and URL are used for referencing There are two link types which can be applied 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 10 Static dynamic Layout Tree 57 This is the root element of Layout Tree which describes all available layout templates The layout tree element provides a title description and can reference other layout trees or directly a particular layout element Layout Element The layout element describes a Layout Template Besides title description parameters unique Name and a keyword the layout element includes a container in which content can be placed Container The container element can include several containers itself or it can be used to place actual content into a layout Unique name title description and parameters are addi tional information documented in the container element The following container types are possible row Column Grid Window Title description and parameters are used within the Win dow element A window is the Plac
30. shows an example of the result of the inventive development process The result of the development process is the inventive Portal Application Archive 35 In the present example the Portal Application Archive 35 is a single file package that includes two application components 70 80 in machine readable code as well an application component assembly descriptor 40 e g XML file specifying the corre a 5 30 40 45 50 60 65 6 lation between both application components 70 80 In the present example the Portal Server Application deployment mechanism uses the application component assembly descriptor 40 and creates a new page with two columns Column 1 contains a single row while column 2 contains two rows Each of these rows contains one application component 70 80 FIG 3D shows a preferred implementation of the inventive deployment process in a Portal Server Application environ ment 90 Portal Application Archives 35 can be deployed directly into the Portal s underlying Application Server 60 AS using its Application Server administration tools 65 Portal Server Application 90 uses the APIs in the Applications Server s deployment process 68 to properly handle all application components 70 80 FIG 3D shows how the different appli cation components 70 80 in the Portal Application Archive 35 influence the different parts 91 92 93 of the Portal Server Application 90 The application components 70 80 plug into
31. thin a Portal Application or Portal site The packaging format of Portlet applications is the Web Archive WAR format that besides the web xml deployment descriptor includes the Portlet xml deployment descriptor that defines the Portlet relevant parts of the web application A single Portlet produces the content of one Portlet win dow In order to leverage the flexibility that Portlets can be usedas building blocks Portlet application developers should strive for small Portlets that contain a specific function instead of one large Portlet that includes all functions This has several advantages the portal end user can decide to only put the needed parts on the page and save space that otherwise would be occupied by the parts not needed the different functions can be split across portal pages to suit the working behaviour of the user or to adapt to limited device display capabilities additional functions can later simply be added as new Portlets Portlets that belong to the same logical application should be bundled together in a Portlet application as this has several advantages like the ability to share configuration data ses sion data and ease of deployment and administration over the approach of one Portlet per Portlet application However Portlet applications are currently very limited as they only deal with the Portlet part and do not allow to preassemble complete Portal Applications like the described invention They miss the
32. tion based on its type many appli cation components reference other application components For example a node in a Topology tree can reference the definition of a Page a node in a Resource tree can reference a Theme definition the definition ofa Page can reference one or more Portlets etc In order to develop and deploy such a Portal Application according to the present application new function compo nents have to be added to the existing prior art Tooling Soft ware and to Portal Server 90 Application Server 60 as fol lows the Tooling Software 30 e g IBM Websphere Studio needs to be able to support the notion of Portal Applica tions which can be developed consistently and comprise multiple individual but related application components internally the Tooling Software 30 must be able to package and export comprehensive Portal Application Archives 35 which can be delivered by the application provider to the Portal Server Application key element is the application component assembly descriptor being preferably a XML file which lists the content of the Portal Applica tion and defines how the content is assembled to provide US 7 716 665 B2 5 a Portal Application application For example in an J2EE environment the package format of choice com prises J2EE EAR files which include all related appli cation components as well as the deployment descriptor XML file the Portal Server 90 or the Application Server 60 o
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