Encyclopedia of Portal Technologies and Applications - Enterprise Portals and Web Services Integration

Portals went through the following different life cycle stages: desktop organization and personalization; single intranet-based portals such as human resource and Internet product-based or industry-based portals; functional-based portals such as knowledge management and business intelligence; and integrated intranet-based enterprise portal (EP) covering some or all functions of the enterprise (see for example http://www.ebizq.net/topics/eai/features/1650. html on how integrating portals and business process management (BPM) enabled the presentation of an integrated view of diverse back-end databases). Current research and practice efforts are directed toward making portals an open system supporting different platforms and allowing its integration into emerging technologies such as Web services (WS). A WS, on the other hand, is defined as an integrating loosely coupled application that uses three major standards: WSDL (definition of WS), UDDI (registry and discovery of WS), and SOAP (access of a WS). However, strongly coupled applications may also benefit from WS technologies to componentized diverse application platforms (i.e., databases, file-based legacy systems) using WS technologies. The article emphasizes cross-organization integration of business function and processes, rather than simply accessing general purpose WS such as weather forecasts and currency conversion. This article highlights challenges stemming from technologies and management issues and opportunities for enhanced application integration and accessibility. Technology-based integration could follow either standard-based open architecture or product-based approach. Current technologies include the product-based MS .NET and the standard-based J2EE and XML. Major players in EP and WS technologies include IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and BEA, with dedicated efforts and strong commitments to the integration of EP and WS. Major issues related to the management of both technologies include transaction management, message control and choreography, workflow management, and security. The following sections detail the discussions on these challenges and describe opportunities though a master-slave relationship between the two technologies. chaLLEngE

Core Services in the Architecture of the National Digital Library for Science Education (NSDL)

We describe the core components of the architecture for the (NSDL) National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library. Over time the NSDL will include heterogeneous users, content, and services. To accommodate this, a design for a technical and organization infrastructure has been formulated based on the notion of a spectrum of interoperability. This paper describes the first phase of the interoperability infrastructure including the metadata repository, search and discovery services, rights management services, and user interface portal facilities

Global integration of public sector information

This paper deals with technological methods for consolidating assets lists of available public sector information (PSI) for re-use. In this direction, the effort is to review the state of the art in delivering access to PSI throughout the world and to prioritize the necessary engagements for joining available PSI catalogues. We propose an architectural framework grounded on Semantic Web technologies to deliver a global platform for federated searching. A speculative survey of available PSI portals is presented, and the initial implementation, results, and analysis of the proposed architecture are covered in detail

Benchmarking performance management systems

The Balanced Scorecard and associated performance management approaches, has become a widely practiced and popular management reporting method in recent times. Moreover, enabling technology, which assists in the delivery and personalisation of corporate performance information, is having a deeper and more rapid impact than ever before. This paper presents a brief comparative benchmarking study of leading enterprise performance management systems. Also, the author discusses the merits of bespoke internet technology development and out-of-the-box portal functionalities. An analysis of key business drivers and implementation risks of such approaches is highlighted via a case study example, and concludes the paper

A semantic web service-based architecture for the interoperability of e-government services

We propose a semantically-enhanced architecture to address the issues of interoperability and service integration in e-government web information systems. An architecture for a life event portal based on Semantic Web Services (SWS) is described. The architecture includes loosely-coupled modules organized in three distinct layers: User Interaction, Middleware and Web Services. The Middleware provides the semantic infrastructure for ontologies and SWS. In particular a conceptual model for integrating domain knowledge (Life Event Ontology), application knowledge (E-government Ontology) and service description (Service Ontology) is defined. The model has been applied to a use case scenario in e-government and the results of a system prototype have been reported to demonstrate some relevant features of the proposed approach

OntoWeaver S: supporting the design of knowledge portals

This paper presents OntoWeaver-S, an ontology-based infrastructure for building knowledge portals. In particular, OntoWeaver-S is integrated with a comprehensive web service platform, IRS-II, for the publication, discovery, and execution of web services. In this way, OntoWeaver-S supports the access and provision of remote web services for knowledge portals. Moreover, it provides a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model and represent knowledge portals, and thus is able to offer high level support for the design and development process. Finally, OntoWeaver-S provides a set of powerful tools to support knowledge portals at design time as well as at run time

An active, ontology-driven network service for Internet collaboration

Web portals have emerged as an important means of collaboration on the WWW, and the integration of ontologies promises to make them more accurate in how they serve users’ collaboration and information location requirements. However, web portals are essentially a centralised architecture resulting in difficulties supporting seamless roaming between portals and collaboration between groups supported on different portals. This paper proposes an alternative approach to collaboration over the web using ontologies that is de-centralised and exploits content-based networking. We argue that this approach promises a user-centric, timely, secure and location-independent mechanism, which is potentially more scaleable and universal than existing centralised portals