In a little over a month, the annual Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) will kick off in San Francisco.  If you’ve never been, it’s a sight to behold.  40,000 or so people show up to learn about all things Oracle, which has been a rapidly expanding set of “all things.”  Within the last two-plus years, Oracle has acquired the big names in the Java world of BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems (of course Sun had much more going for it than Java).  Oracle has habitually added its new acquisitions to the party, and this year is no exception.  JavaOne is now taking place at the same time as OOW and is available to OOW attendees for a small fee.

Of course, as a portal guy, the BEA acquisition was most interesting to me.   BEA had two strong Portal lines, WebLogic Portal and AquaLogic User Interaction.  Both have lived on as parts of the WebCenter Suite, though neither is considered “strategic” in the long term.  In the WebCenter Suite, the BEA Products joined the new WebCenter Framework, which offers a new perspective on what a portal can and should be.  Last summer, WebCenter Spaces was introduced and added to the lineup.  The two WebCenter Portals are considered “strategic” and therefore will be available for the long haul.

WebCenter Framework  (WCF) really turns a traditional portal on its head.  It’s truly a framework, allowing developers to create applications as they wish and essentially inject portal functionality into them.  WCF’s roots are in Oracle’s Application Development Framework which itself is based on JSF.  The ADF and WCF allow developers to rapidly build dynamic, rich internet applications (RIA) in a declarative fashion using Oracle’s JDeveloper IDE.

WebCenter Spaces (WCS) is and out of the box application built with the WebCenter Framework.  For those familiar with AquaLogic User Interaction (ALUI, the former Plumtree Portal), Spaces offers much of the same functionality.   The key differences are that WCS allows all of the customization allowed by the WebCenter Framework, and has strong out of the box integrations to the various WebCenter Services.  As I discussed in a post last year, WebCenter Spaces offers collaboration and web (enterprise) 2.0 functionality to the various portal offerings.

Beyond the portal offerings, the WebCenter Suite offers the aforementioned WebCenter Services and limited licenses for Secure Enterprise Search and Universal Content Management.

Seem like a lot to take in?  We’re just getting started!  If you’d like to learn more, I suggest making out to OOW.  If you’d like to discuss it further with some experts from Perficient, just stop by our booth at 301 Moscone South.  We’d love to talk to you about anything, but especially topics like the following:

• I was a BEA customer for years.  What do I do now?
• I’m new to Oracle Portals.  Where do I start?
• I just bought the WebCenter Suite.  Which of the portals should I use?
• Can I use WebCenter Spaces as a starting point for a custom portal?

GIMP in action editing a snapshot of the Perficient home page.

Recently, at a client, I was presented with the problem of creating updates to an existing UI (important note: “updates” not complete redo).  To aide overall understanding of the goals of the project, I set out to create some wireframes.  None of this is unusual, of course, but I had a choice to make as to how I would create those wireframes.

I didn’t have access to a high-end tool like iRise, and I didn’t have the time or patience to create real HTML.  So I was left with using a drawing tool like MS Visio, or so I thought…

My past experience told me that Visio-based wireframes would at best approximate the final result.  More likely they would help the business and developers understand where fields, labels, buttons, etc. would go, but everyone would have to visualize in their heads what the pages would look like once the style guide was applied, etc.

After thinking about it some more, it occurred to me that the pages I was working on already existed.

So why should I kill myself creating mockups in Visio that require all interested parties to make a cognitive leap to understand the end result (and definitely bring in more chance for confusion or worse, disappointment)?

I remembered that a few days prior I’d figured out how to edit a picture of one of my kids using the Open Source product GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).  I’d seen it before in various Linux (though it’s available on Windows as well) installations I’d done, but never really did much with it.  I found it pretty useful for that personal application, so I decided to see if it could work to address the wireframe problem I was dealing with.

I navigated to the current pages and used the new Windows 7 Snipping Tool to capture a screenshot in a png format, though Snagit or even Alt-PrtSc would have worked just fine here.  I then opened that png file in GIMP to edit and create the new wireframes.

There was a learning curve, but once I got past that the results were really very good.  I was able to create new wireframes based off the existing pages that made sense to the customer since they didn’t have to extrapolate, and instead saw the changes in a context that made sense to them.  Of course, real html would have been ideal, but given the constraints (again, not uncommon) the results were very good, far better than abstract drawings.

As part of that aforementioned learning curve, I discovered quite a few things:

• This technique won’t work unless you have an existing page to work from.  GIMP is an image manipulation program and not a drawing tool.
• Despite a lack of drawing functionality, simple shapes can be created using the “Stroke Selection” feature.  More information can be found here.
• Experimenting with and learning about layers is really important.  Layers essentially allow you to position one image on top of another (like the ability to  position shapes in a drawing program).  It’s also important to know that your image has to be saved in .xcf format.  Otherwise, the layers get “flattened,” leaving you no way to click on them and move them.
• The near equivalent of “grouping” shapes in a drawing program can be accomplished by going to the Layer Window, right clicking on a layer and selecting “Merge Down.”  This causes a layer to be “merged” with the layer directly below it, essentially making one layer out of two.
• If something isn’t showing up like expected, check which layer is currently being edited (looking at the Layers window in the “Dock” which is there by default).  If you’re adding something, you most likely want to add it to the “Background” layer.
• Sometimes you can’t do anything until you’ve released the current selection.  To do this, click on the select tool and then once on the image.  The current selection (shown as a shape with a dotted outline) should disappear (though the image will be unaltered).
• If you accidentally close the dock window that contains things like the Layers Window, you can recover it by clicking on Windows->Recently Closed Docks.
• Instead of being able to create and move objects around, like in a drawing program, you have to shift your thinking toward copying (or cutting) and pasting images (whether from within the current image or from without.
• If you want to move something on the page, select it, cut it (ctl-x), paste it as a “New Layer” (right-click->Edit->Paste as->New Layer).  Then, move the pasted object to the new location.  You can use the fill tool to get rid of the ugly hole left in the image when the cut was enacted.
• A straight line can be created by selecting the pencil or the paint brush, clicking on the image, clicking shift, and then clicking on the image again at the terminal location.
• If you need to make the entire image bigger, select Image->Canvas Size…, and change the dimensions.  This changes the size of the working area, but not the size of the existing image.  To be able to edit the new available area, select the Background layer, click Layer->Layer Boundary Size…, and resize the Background layer to match the size of the canvas.  You can then use the “Color Picker” to select the page background color and fill the new empty section with the same color as the rest of the background.  Footers can be dealt with by cutting and pasting them to the bottom of the layer.  Note: The little chain icon next to the boxes where the height and widths are assigned can be clicked to unlock the two dimensions, thereby freeing you from the existing aspect ratio.

Well, that’s a lot of information in a short amount of space.  I hope this is useful, and I’m interested to hear what others have used when faced with the need for quick and meaningful wireframes.  Please feel free to post in the comments any thoughts.

If you want to get started with Oracle’s “strategic” portal offering, WebCenter Framework (WCF), it’s best to start by gaining an understanding of Oracle’s Application Development Framework (ADF), because ADF forms the foundation of WCF.  The ADF is Oracle’s development framework that will be used internally for their own application development (i.e. most to all of their future products will be built using the ADF).  So, even if WebCenter isn’t in your immediate plans, if you’re an Oracle shop, learning the ADF is worthwhile.

Where does WebCenter Framework come in?  Essentially, WCF adds several portal capabilities to the ADF like customization and personalization.

In an effort to get started with the ADF, two blogs out there are exceedingly helpful, Shay Smeltzer’s at http://blogs.oracle.com/shay/ and the AMIS blog at http://technology.amis.nl/blog/ (though the AMIS blog is more ADF specific here).  Both have a wealth of useful and detailed information, and Shay has an excellent “Getting Started” post found here.

Two books by Oracle Press are must-haves when working with these technologies:

• Oracle Fusion Developer Guide: Building Rich Internet Applications with Oracle ADF Business Components and Oracle ADF Faces
• Oracle WebCenter 11g Handbook: Build Rich, Customizable Enterprise 2.0 Applications

Please feel free to post any other useful resources you find in the comments.

Recently, I ran across a mystifying situation while working with an ADF application in Oracle’s JDeveloper.  In all fairness, I was working on an unsupported platform (Fedora 11) to see how well the free operating system would work as a development environment.

When firing up the Oracle Business Component Browser, none of my changes to my Model project’s Application Module were being reflected.  If I accessed those changes in a jspx page, they showed up just fine.

It took me quite a while to look around under the hood of JDeveloper and figure out where it was placing the “built” xml files.  When I found them under <Application-Root>/Model/classes/<package>, the timestamps said they hadn’t been altered in over a week!  So, for my installation at least, “running” the Application Module didn’t automatically kick off the necessary build.

Happily, the solution was quite simple.  On the main menu, click Build->Make Model.jpr.  Then, right click on the Application Module and select Run.  The resulting Business Component Browser will now reflect the latest changes.

In the early days of automobile manufacturing, buying a complete car was not possible.  Instead, a buyer would purchase a chassis from a chassis manufacturer and then hire a coachbuilder to build out a body and fit it to the chassis.  As production became more sophisticated and manufacturers did more of their own coach-building internally, the practice fell out of favor for all but the most expensive cars.  Additionally, the advent of unibody construction, where the body can take some load and is therefore intimately integrated with the chassis, made coach-building all but impossible.

As, I’ve listened to more and more descriptions of the progress of portal technologies (especially when running in a cloud environment) , I hear a lot of discussions about “reusable components,” which, of course, has been the Holy Grail of software pretty much since computing began.  It does appear that a lot of reusable components are built and will be built for enterprise applications.  The ultimate goal is that less technical users will be able to construct composite applications through configuration rather than custom coding.

I’m starting to wonder if this means that we’ll be moving from a web development era very much like the early automotive industry , where we buy a platform and then hire someone to build out our site on that platform, to something more like the automotive situation we currently have.  We’ll have a pre-set number of “models” with options that can change.

In some ways, we’ve already seen this start to happen, as lots of site “types” can be identified.  For example, most commerce sites look similar, with a way to browse a hierarchical catalog, search, find a local retail store, etc…  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Continuing with the metaphor, it’s good that the gas and brake pedals are in the same place on every modern car.  It’s certainly easier for users if items of site are in expected locations.

On the other hand, it may be that the inherent complexity and dynamic nature of the enterprise environment will always require custom coding to make the necessary integrations happen.  So, personally, I think we’ll end up somewhere in the middle.  We’ll have lots of pre-built reusable components that may or may not require some custom work to get them integrated properly along with plain-old, from-scratch custom builds.

I spent a day this week at an Oracle Cloud Computing event in Minneapolis.  One of the interesting points made was a distinction between various types of cloud computing.  I hadn’t thought much about it before, but I think it’s a really useful model to help people start to understand the new and somewhat amorphous world of cloud computing.  The categories are as follows:

SaaS – Software as a Service – These are applications that a user can access via the web and don’t require much or any customer configuration.  Examples here include Oracle CRM On Demand, Salesforce.com, and Zoho.

PaaS – Platform as a Service – Platforms (like app servers) are provided by a cloud vendor and the customer can create custom applications and deploy them.

IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service – Essentially virtual machines are delivered, and the customer installs software on those virtual machines.

As you may have gathered, Mike is at the Gartner Portals, Content, & Collaboration Conference this week.  I’ve been here as well, th0ugh busy with some other things, so this is my first post on the subject.

At one of the early sessions of the week Gene Phifer stated something to the effect of “If you aren’t using personalization, you don’t need a portal.  If you’re not using personalization, you probably just need a website”  While I agree with his point, I think the statement is a little too narrow.

Personalization is one of several key services that portal products generally provide.  They also provide a development platform, navigation, layout, look-and-feel, etc.  So, I can think of important use-cases where a portal would be useful without using personalization functionality.

Take this scenario.  An organization has a legacy application that they’d like to expose to the outside world without requiring authentication.  Unfortunately, the interface doesn’t match the corporate branding guidelines and looks like it was designed in 1994.  To get it approved for the web, the organization needs to create a new user interface to the application.  At that point, building a new portlet or portlets that access the application and exposing it in a public, unauthenticated portal is one of the better options.

So, my statement would be, “if you’re not taking significant advantage of services provided by your portal platform, then you don’t need that portal.”

Since Oracle’s acquisition of BEA last year, Oracle Portal has been working through its strategy and messaging.  Things have become clearer over the last 12+ months. As I mentioned in a recent post, WebCenter Spaces was released in early July of this year.  Now, the general marketing push is behind WebCenter Spaces and WebCenter Framework.

The other, older portal technologies are fading from marketing view, but they are far from dead.  These include Oracle Portal, WebLogic Portal, and WebCenter Interaction (formerly ALUI).  It’s clear that Oracle’s preference is for new initiatives to be built on either of the WebCenter strategic offerings.  It’s easy to see how to create an intranet or a custom application with those, but the best fit for the large-scale, transactional, extranet site is probably still WebLogic Portal.  Additionally, those who have a large investment in WebCenter Interaction can still get a lot of value of continuing with that product.

Oracle is making wise decisions in releasing new functionality as services that all of the portal front-ends can consume.  This allows the “strategic” (WCF and WCS) products to move forward, but keeps those on the “continue and converge” track (WLP, WCI, and Oracle Portal) from falling behind.  It’s nice to see that Oracle is not forcing anyone to migrate, but instead doing a lot of work to make the strategic products compelling enough that a future migration is worth the effort.

While Mike spent last week at IBM’s Portal Excellence Conference, I was in San Francisco at Oracle OpenWorld (OOW).  As always, it was an enormous, overwhelming celebration of all things Oracle.  Of course, I spent my time focusing on a few technologies in the portal; identity and access management; and governance, risk, and compliance spaces.  Over the next few days, as I settle my thoughts, I’ll be posting on the various products and themes that came up while at OOW.

With the release of WebCenter Spaces on July 1 of this year (as part of WebCenter Suite 11g), Oracle has made an interesting statement.  When you look at Spaces, it seems to do a lot of the things that WebCenter Interaction (formerly BEA ALUI and before that Plumtree Portal) does.  The key difference is that Spaces is built on top of the WebCenter Framework, which is Oracle’s “Strategic” platform going forward.  Spaces also incorporates all of the WebCenter Services (which I’ll cover in a later post) out of the box.

So, this release leaves an interesting question for people using or about to start using WebCenter Interaction.  Are they on a viable platform?  Here’s what I think.  I think if your organization is currently using WCI/ALUI/Plumtree, and has a set of developers skilled in delivering on that platform, there’s no hurry to switch.  WCI will be in the “Continue and Converge” category for nearly eight more years.  If you’re looking at a new initiative, and certainly if you don’t have WCI in house already, you should give heavy consideration to the new Spaces product.  I’d recommend doing a short-term Proof-0f-Concept/Bake-Off between WCI and Spaces, and if Spaces can provide the desired functionality, go with the “Strategic” platform.

I’ve been thinking lately about the relationship between portals and other applications that they expose.  I find it strange when people want to recreate a viable application in a portal.  Just because it’s possible doesn’t make it a good idea.  It’s amazing how pervasive this idea is.

Until now, I’ve always thought of a portal as the glue that connects an enterprise together.  My view is now changing.  I think a more proper definition is the entry point or map to the enterprise.  Of course, new, custom applications can be built purely in a portal, but replacing existing, working applications with portal approximations must be considered carefully before being pursued.

This application recreation urge seems to originate from a general push in the industry that users have some desire to perform every interaction with a computer through one interface.  It sounds like a good idea on the surface.  What could be simpler?

I have to question the premise.  Sometimes legacy applications work great just as they are.  Often, extensive functionality has been built up over a number releases that can span years or even decades.  There are lots of instances where examining two desktop applications at once is beneficial.  If users really desired all computer interactions to be encompassed in one interface, why don’t they request the ability to do spreadsheet work in MS Word?  Why is no one asking to Instant Message from iTunes?  It is often useful to incorporate a piece of spreadsheet data (especially a chart) into a Word document, but duplicating Excel functionality in Word would be redundant and ridiculous.

Similarly, portals benefit by exposing some business application data and functionality, but complete duplication is often counterproductive.  It may be nice to see your latest emails in a portlet, but often the form factor will be too small to be productive.  When one considers the excellent web interfaces offered by leading email vendors like IBM Lotus and Microsoft, the validity of a stripped–down email portlet becomes even more questionable.  It may be best for a portlet to alert the user that new emails have arrived or even message subjects, but, very often, linking off to a more capable application for more involved interaction with email is preferable.

In another example, I’m amazed at how often I see content administration portlets.  Aside from avoiding licensing issues, I don’t really see the point.  Is a content administration portlet going to be better than the dedicated tools that come with ECM systems?  Alfresco’s content admin portlet is essentially the entire admin interface in a portlet form (which is certainly more useful than a limited, stripped-down portlet).  Wouldn’t it be easier to implement a connection between the portal and desired functionality in the dedicated ECM tool, providing links where they make sense?

To this end, we could start viewing portals as the map to the enterprise.  The portal could provide easy access to data and functionality that is otherwise hard to find.  Existing applications shouldn’t be so much recreated as exposed.  When more detail is desired, the limited view in the portal should give way to the fuller application (i.e. provide in-context links).   The portal interface should be an overview application.

This leaves a problem.  To provide a seamless and satisfying user experience, effective single-sign-on (SSO) needs to be in place.  Very often SSO is created in ad-hoc fashion solving only the immediate problem, commonly creating an insecure result.  Identity and Access Management (IAM) products exist, in part, to solve this problem.  Conceptually, IAM can be considered the bridge for users between portals and the applications they expose, allowing authentication in one app to “count” in another.

Of course, single-sign-on is only one benefit of a centralized and cohesive IAM implementation.  We’ll be exploring IAM and its benefits for portals and the enterprise more in upcoming posts.

I’m a believer in the explosion of Netbooks into the PC marketplace over the last year or so (for those of you that don’t know what a netbook is, an excellent rundown on their history can be found on Wired). As a proud cheapskate, the idea of a $300 – $400 laptop is very appealing. As a business traveler, a computer that weighs around three pounds and can fit on the “seatback tray in front of you” without contorting body into a pretzel to use the keyboard sounds like a welcome relief.

After reading up on the Toshiba Mini NB205 I couldn’t resist any longer, and now that it has arrived, I’m in the middle of a continuing experiment to see just how much of my job I can accomplish on this thing.

As the economy continues to be choppy and therefore budgets remain tight, I’m beginning to wonder if organizations can really afford to ignore the economics of these little machines. When you consider that so many corporate users do little more than check email and run the occasional spreadsheet or powerpoint, the question has to be asked, “why do these users need a $1,500 dual-core?” I think its very possible that a large swath of expensive hardware could be replaced by these little, adequate machines.

I see netbooks fitting nicely into the slot currently occupied by notebooks, where a user has an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse at work to make inputting tasks as comfortable as possible.

Starbucks founder Howard Shultz talks about wanting his coffee shops to be the “third place” that people spend time (home and work being the other two). I’m starting to think that these netbooks could become the “third device” (the full-size laptop/PC and the smart phone being the other two).

This leads to some questions that I think we’ll start having to explore. If netbooks begin to become a prominent fixture in the enterprise environment, what does that mean for portals and web UIs in general? Do the small sizes of the displays on the devices necessitate a new interface design? Conversely, as we see the sizes of the displays on these devices begin to expand, are no new changes required? Do we need to account for the slower, single-core processors?  With the limited height on the displays is there a premium on getting content “above the fold?”

I don’t claim to have all the answers, and as quickly as new machines with different capabilities are coming on the market, the questions may change a bit over time.  I just don’t want to ignore a segment of the computer market that seems to be gaining steam, and make sure that the capabilities are maximized.