Portlet factory 101

Editor's Notes

• #13: Automation of your code - With Bowstreet Portlet Factory, developers can create custom automation components (Builders) that encapsulate commonly used design patterns and company-specific business processes. These Builders can then be shared with other developers across the organization, who can easily reuse the functionality without the burden of recreating the same complex code.
• #15: SOA, Enterprise App Integration,
• #16: Key Benefits Enables reuse of existing assets across projects and departments Automates back end connectivity Speeds creation of new applications Promotes application flexibility Key Features Create data services that wrap data from any system Enable quick access to the leading back end systems with Portlet Factory Integration extensions Utilize one data service to drive the display of multiple portlets Reuse a single user interface Model by plugging in data from different services 1- One benefit is that you can encapsulate your back end data into a set of well defined services that can then be reused across your dashboard project and even across other types of applications within your organization. You may already have your applications exposed as services. If you don’t, you can use a number of different tools to create these services, including the Integration extensions that are part of Portlet Factory. As I mentioned earlier, our integration extensions make application connectivity fast and easy. Using Portlet Factory’s SAP capabilities, for example, you can quickly connect to SAP and expose one or more of their APIs or BAPIs as services. 2. Another benefit of this architecture is that you can speed the creation of new applications and new portlets by reusing data services. For example, you can use the data service called Bookings to drive the display of multiple portlets that display bookings data. Here we are reusing one service to create a portlet with a status gauge of bookings as well as another portlet that shows a table of that same bookings data.<click> 3. The final benefit of this type of architecture is that it promotes application flexibility. You can use reuse the same Portlet User Interface, with different data services. For example, you can easily swap out the data service that drives these portlets, which is a bookings service, with another data service such as opportunities. So, an SOA promotes flexibility by being able to dynamically swap out different services without having to change the user interface.
• #18: Speeding development the first time is only half the real power of Portlet Factory, however. Profiles allow new versions of existing portlets, without new development cycles. In the past if you needed an portlet for one group, say an Order Summary portlet for internal sales reps that was very detailed, then determined that pushing that out to distributors on an extranet would increase efficiency even more – but with less detailed order information, you would do one of two things. You would either add conditional logic to the existing portlet, or you would copy, edit and deploy a new portlet. Both are approaches that will work, but in either case, new development cycles are necessary, as well as lengthy testing and deployment cycles. As you’ll see in the demo, Profiles eliminate further lengthy development, test and deployment cycles making it even FASTER to build portlets for subsequent requirements. That’s because developers don’t create new portlets each time a new portlet is required, they simply profile a single instance (essentially, a single code base) then apply profiles that allow it to be called by different portals at run-time for use in different contexts. This Regeneration capability, based on Profiles, significantly eases ongoing maintenance by propagating changes on-demand to all portlet instances. Additionally, Profiles may be exposed through the Portals standard Edit, Configure and administration features – a powerful capability that allows portlets and variations to be created and customized by any delegated administrator and/or user, with no limits. IT and developers are no longer the bottleneck for much of the varied portlets required as the needs of the business evolve.
• #20: Another feature included in the Dashboard Framework is the ability to very easily create robust, browser-based configuration wizards that enable non-technical users to dynamically personalize and configure their dashboard portlets –without having to involve IT. End users can change really any aspect of the portlet exposed by IT, which can include the look and feel of the portlet, the functionality, application flow, and even connectivity to the back end system. Basic support for creating these browser-based configuration screens is included as part of WebSphere Portlet Factory, but the framework adds some features that makes this even easier. For example, we include a Table Customizer Builder that makes it very straightforward to customize a table, including features such as the ability to reorder columns, rename columns, change column widths and alignments, add sorting, and so on. With this capability to extend portlet configuration to business users, companies can increase the flexibility of their dashboards and reduce IT maintenance costs
• #22: Benefits of Regen Enable iterative design and rapid change Improve customer service and satisfaction Reduce maintenance costs
• #28: 1. For each builder call in the model XML, the builder’s class is read from the BuilderDef. Then the builder’s regeneration code is invoked, passing builder inputs saved from design time. 2. From regen class, builders can introspect, create, and modify any parts of the generated application. They can also invoke any other builders.
• #29: 1. For each builder call in the model XML, the builder’s class is read from the BuilderDef. Then the builder’s regeneration code is invoked, passing builder inputs saved from design time. 2. From regen class, builders can introspect, create, and modify any parts of the generated application. They can also invoke any other builders.