IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud

Table of Contents

IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud

Credits

Foreword

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

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Free Access for Packt account holders

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Portal Assessment

IBM WebSphere Portal (WP), IBM Web Experience Factory (WEF), and the cloud

SaaS/IaaS/PaaS cloud engagement models

Getting started—case study

Step 1 — background, objective, and approach

Step 2 — business need and portal alignment:

Business value alignment

Business drivers and current state

Current state, future state, and a road map

Current state — pain points and how portal capabilities can fill the gap

Step 3 — A Day-in-the-Life demonstration

Step 4 — the financial case

Step 5 — recommendations and next steps — POV

Cloud use cases applied

Cloud approach with IBM enterprise SmartCloud — initial high-level tasks

Cloud approach with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) — initial high-level tasks

Portal and Cloudonomics sense

Summary

2. Portal Governance: Adopting the Mantra of Business Performance through IT Execution

Social and technical evolution

Five steps to governance

Establish a sense of urgency

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Create the guiding coalition

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Develop a vision strategy

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Communicate the changed vision

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Empower broad-based action

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Portal governance — best practices

Formulate a portal governance committee

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Obtain Executive Sponsorship

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Establish a Portal Center of Excellence

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Develop governance effectiveness metrics

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Time to develop and release new portal artifacts — A2Z Bullion Bank action

Adopt and adapt portal governance

A2Z Bullion Bank action

Adopting virtual portals — A2Z Bullion Bank action

Typical portal roles

Value interests

Summary

3. Portal Requirements Engineering

The discipline of requirements and requirements as a discipline

List users, existing systems, and functional requirements

Derive actors and use cases to create the use case model

Storyboard or wireframes

Inventory-large reusable assets

Identify delta use cases

Document nonfunctional requirements

Portal call center channel

Portal self-service (core banking) channel

Workload distribution

Validate requirements with the customer

Summary

4. Portal Architecture: Analysis and Design

Cloud architectural model

Portal architectural decisions

Information architecture — wireframes and storyboards

Portlet

Portlet view

Transition data

POM and service design conceptual overview

Service to data design overview — best practice artifacts

Enterprise reference architecture — simplifying complexity with DataPower and all handlers

A2Z banking reference and portal application architecture

A2Z call center reference and portal application architecture

Cloud as the fabric for resilient architecture

Architecting for nonfunctional requirements

Summary

5. Portal Golden and Cloud Architecture

Reusable architecture assets and IBM Portal Accelerators

IBM Accelerators for IBM WebSphere Portal

IBM Retail Banking Template for WebSphere Portal (v2.0)

IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator

IBM Dashboard Accelerator

IBM Collaboration Accelerator

IBM Content Accelerator

Portlet Catalog and Lotus Greenhouse

Cloud execution environment and architectural model for cloud computing — IBM cloud reference architecture

Highly available portal golden and SOA reference architecture

Virtual portals, realms, and cluster partitioning

Portal collaboration, pervasive, and voice runtime architectures

Portal security architecture

Single Sign-On (SSO) — patterns

Portal architecture and performance modeling — cloud and traditional paradigms

Portal operational model and workload analysis

IBM lab tools — mainframe and distributed

IBM zCP3000

IBM Automatic Model Building using InferENCE (AMBIENCE)

Commercial solutions and tools — mainframe and distributed

CA HyPerformix

BMC

Cloud capacity planning — IBM SmartCloud Monthly Cost Estimator

Cloud capacity planning — Amazon Monthly Calculator

Test architecture and test data governance

Architecture assessment and operational technical readiness review

Summary

6. Portal Build, Deployment, and Release Management

Portal build, deployment, and release management

Best practices and Jazz-enabled staging

Portal tools

XMLAccess

ReleaseBuilder

Site management tool

Subsequent releases

Release scenarios

Portal scripting

Manual steps prior to using ReleaseBuilder

WEF and WP environment — high-level release steps

Step 1 — Initial release — preparing the source environment

Step 2 — building the release

Step 3 — preparing the target environment

Step 4 — importing the release

Step 5 — post-transfer actions

Building a portlet WAR for production

Excluding files from a published WAR

Using the .excludeFromServer file

Global exclude across all projects

Exclude on a project-by-project basis

Using the **/nodeploy** directory

Publishing to the JSR 286 portal container

Portlet deployment

Checklist for portal artifacts

Checklist for WEF-related JARs

web.xml processing and templates

web.xml template files

The WEB-INF\web.xml file

web.xml processing at project creation and publishing

Other things that impact web.xml

Themes and skins deployment

Portal resources management via policies

Publishing to a remote AMI instance on the Amazon Cloud

Cloud-enabled environment provisioning, deployment, and release management with IBM Workload Deployer

Summary

7. Introduction to Web Experience Factory

What is Web Experience Factory?

Key benefits of using Web Experience Factory for portlet development

The development environment

Key components of WEF — builders, models, and profiles

Builders

Simple and complex builders

The face of builders

Builder artifacts

Inspecting content created by builders

Models

Modeling

Code generation versus software automation

Profiles

Regeneration engine

Creating a WEF project

Creating your first Portlet

Executing your portlet from the designer

Deploying your portlet

Summary

8. Service Layers

The Service Consumer and Service Provider patterns in WEF

Service builders

Creating a service model

Explaining the Service Definition builder inputs

Creating sample data for the Service Provider model

Explanation about Simple Schema Generator builder inputs

Emulating the data retrieval

Creating a service operation

Testing the Service Provider models

Revisiting the Logical Operations

Invoking the Service Provider model from the Service Consumer model

Summary

9. Invoking Web Services

Portal projects leveraging web services

The Web Service Call builder

General

Request Parameters

Request SOAP Header

Service Information

WS-Security

Advanced

Web service inputs from other builders

Sample model

Data transformation and manipulation of service response

The transform builders

IXml Java interface

Summary

10. Building the Application User Interface

Choosing the right builders to create the UI

Understanding how WEF builds UI

Data-driven development approach

Modifying the content created by WEF

Modification through builders and the Design pane

Modification through the HTML code

High-level and low-level builders

Data Service User Interface builder

Creating a simple database Service Provider model

Working with the Data Services User Interface builder

Data Services User Interface overview

General

List Page Settings

Settings for the Create and Update Page

Page-to-Page Navigation

Label Translation Settings

Building the Data Services User Interface sample model

General

List Page Settings

Settings for the Create and Update Page

Page to Page Navigation

Label Translation Settings

Paging

Table

Update

Modifying the generated application

Design panel

Rich Data Definition builder

Theme builder

Modifier builders

Modify the base pages used by high-level builders

HTML Templates in WEF

Summary

11. The Dojo Builders and Ajax

What is Dojo and Ajax

The problem

The solution

The benefits of using Dojo and Ajax in portal development

The Dojo and Ajax related builders

Dojo Rich Text Editor sample

Creating the model

Adding the builders

Adding the variables

Adding the Dojo builders

Adding the Text builders

Adding the processing section

Testing the model

Implementing Post-Action for partial page refresh

Dojo Tree builder sample

Client Event Handler

Summary

12. WEF Profiling

Profiling

Defining some WEF profiling terms

Profile selection handler

Profile set editor

The Manage Profiles tab

The Entries tab

Select handler

Profiling sample

Sample portlet — exposing profiles through the portal's Configure option

Creating a profile set

Profile-enabling builder inputs

Providing values to profile entries

Testing profiling from the designer

Testing the sample portlet in the designer

The Portlet Adapter builder

Creating a portal page

Placing the portlet on the Sales page

Exposing the individual values in portal

Role-based profiling

Building portlet for role-based profiling

Profile set for role-based profiling

WebSphere Portal configuration for role-based profiling

Endless possibilities with profiling

Summary

13. Types of Models

One portlet, many models

Summary of the model types

Model types demystified

User interface models

The Rule of 50

The Portlet Adapter builder

Service models

Imported models

Sample scenario for imported model

Base models

Configuring imported models through profiling

Model container

Linked models

Summary

14. WEF and Mobile Web Applications

Mobile devices

Desktop applications versus mobile web applications

WEF handling of mobile web applications

Mobile web application sample

A2Z web mobile strategy

Requirements

Expected outcome

Multichannel web application sample

Adding variables to your application

Adding pages to your application

Adding profile set to your application

Adding more builders to your application

Testing your application

Adding header and links

Adding the Data Page and Data Layout builders to your application

Testing the final version of your application

Testing your application on an iPhone simulator

Expanding the sample model

Summary

15. How to Implement a Successful Portal Project with WEF

Planning for success

Required skills for developing a portlet with WEF

Difference between a portal project and a JEE project

Successful WEF project requires experienced WEF developers

Training and mentoring

Hiring or contracting an experienced portal architect/WEF developer

Development environment

WebSphere Portal Server installation

WebSphere Portal Server Community Edition — WAS CE

Development IDE

WEF on Eclipse

WEF on RAD

Source control with WEF

Avoiding merging of model files

XMLAccess scripts

Roles, permissions, access level

Authentication versus authorization

Portal resources versus portlet resources

Portlet resources and WEF

Development of POCs or prototypes

Benefits to the product management and business analysis teams

Benefits to the portal architecture and development teams

WEF project folder structure

Folder structure for the servable content

Folder structure for the nonservable content

Summary

16. Portlet and Portal Testing

Test strategy and plan

Functional/nonfunctional test tools and automation

Functional Testing Automation

Nonfunctional testing

Test environment and test data

Overall test metrics

Response time

Java Virtual Machine

JDBC pool

Thread pool

Session size

Elapsed time

CPU

Parallel Portlet Rendering

Caching

Portal testing

Benchmarking portal — validating NFRs via load testing

Portlet testing — time to walk the walk

WEF testing

Comparator

Threshold

Message

flushImmediately

Security testing

Performance anti-patterns

Summary

Other references:

17. Portal and Portlet Performance Monitoring

Business and technology monitoring

APM as a discipline — choose your weapons

Portal server monitoring with ITCAM for WebSphere

Problem determination — memory diagnostics

The Memory Leak Diagnosis view

The Server view

The Portal view

Monitoring slowest portlets

Monitoring contentions and locks

Setting traps and alerts based on performance thresholds

Code performance monitoring via Java profiling

PMI is your best friend

Web analytics

Cloud monitoring

Green Data Center monitoring

Summary

18. Portal Troubleshooting

Problem determination and troubleshooting

Divide and conquer

Project lifecycle interdisciplines

Use case

Skills and tools level

IBM Support Assistant—general tools

ISA for WebSphere Portal

DIR — Download, install, and run

Choose Problem Type

Enable Split-Second (if needed)

View output and open case with IBM

Troubleshooting in WebSphere Application Server v8

Trace level — debug with ARM turned on

Splunk engine

Summary

19. Portal, WEF, and Portlet Tuning

Tuning — strategy and knowledge

Tuning lifecycle

Tuning candidates and test cases

Bottleneck 1 — broker services — registration services — 7 seconds of response time results with a 4-second max goal to achieve

Bottleneck 2 — broker services — lease rate services — tuning for response time

Bottleneck 3 — call center services — softphone incoming call and live call portal — tuning for throughput

Performance tuning — a deep dive into WEF

Performance best practices

Addressing memory consumption

Size of result sets

Stateless services

Paging data

Cache Control builder and caching strategy

Caching strategy

Performance-related log files

Model Actions log file

Server Stats log file

Session Size log file

Enabling session size tracing

Analyzing the session size log file

Summary

20. Portal Post-production

A2Z Bank business and technical monitoring

Measuring portal and cloud success

Training users and support

Enabling impersonation

Summary

Index

IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud

IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud

Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing

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Credits

Authors

Chelis Camargo

Helmar Martens

Reviewers

Joey Bernal

Philip Cheshire

Mark Polly

Michael Witherspoon

Krishna

Acquisition Editor

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Development Editor

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Technical Editor

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Cover Work

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Foreword

When I joined IBM in early 2001, WebSphere Portal was little more than an idea. But some believed this was going to be the future of web technology. When WebSphere Portal v1 was released later in that same year, spending the time required to cobble together the components needed to make it run, was an exercise in patience and persistence. But it did run; and it got better, until eventually it evolved into the robust enterprise platform that is the focus of this book.

The emphasis on the word 'Enterprise' within the content of this book is no mistake. Portal projects within an organization are generally enterprise-level projects. Of course, there are smaller and more focused portal implementations that lean toward a specific value proposition; but generally, a portal's strength lies in integrating an organization's content, processes, and systems in new, productive ways. This allows the portal to provide one-stop access across the entire organization. These types of large projects can bring out the best and worst of a company's internal processes and systems. In some ways, they can be the most challenging projects on the planning board.

Why is that? A portal can provide an integration and aggregation point for all of your existing systems. This allows you to expose deep hidden knowledge and information, providing immediate potential benefit. However, this can also expose weaknesses in those systems, due to integration complexity, scalability, security issues, or other lurking problems. It can also force an organization to reevaluate the way it does business. Processes need to be documented, reviewed, or reinvented, if maximum benefit is to be gained by the effort.

This book is all about providing guidance, expert advice, and counsel to the reader, and is the culmination of years of knowledge and best practices in the industry. By bringing together their own extensive knowledge combined with the knowledge of other practitioners, consultants, developers, and customers and then distilling the good bits, Chelis and Helmar have provided a new look at the industry, which is both welcome and long overdue. One thing I love about this book is its appeal to many types of different readers.

The book begins with a focus on identifying and defining your project, giving business owners and project managers the tools and information they need, to make the right decisions from the start. It then provides an update on some of the latest approaches for delivering projects in the most efficient way possible, and with the quickest return on investment. These could save many project teams from having to learn some things the hard way.

Starting with Chapter 7, Introduction to Web Experience Factory, the book takes a more developer-focused turn, providing readers with advice and examples for building the application functionality a project requires. This includes guiding the developer into the world of the Web Experience Factory and teaching him/her how to use it effectively to deliver results. The chapters build the reader's knowledge level, to go quickly from building simple applications to more advanced capabilities, such as profiling users, and providing customized views for mobile devices. Finally, Chapter 18, Portal Troubleshooting and the next chapters will appeal to anyone focused on administration and management. This is especially important for those who are challenged with the goal of making an environment run efficiently and effectively.

While different areas of this book focus on the goals and responsibilities of different stakeholders within an organization, this does not imply that these sections within the book are mutually exclusive. In fact, it implies just the opposite; while some chapters have more technical details, others are more focused on the overall business experience, providing benefit to everyone involved in the project. I can attest to this from personal experience; in reviewing this book I have read it from cover to cover, and I have learned much, much more than what my feedback to the authors has provided.

We all know that technology moves in cycles, and I have found that the same is true for the technical community. Hard-won knowledge and best practices are learned, gathered, and shared until everyone seems to be well educated. Eventually, a new crop of customers and users emerge and technology evolves just enough that best practices, once thought to be old news, are new again. This knowledge is shared across the community and a new cycle of learning begins. In that light, this book will help all of us learn, review, and continue this cycle. In some ways, the knowledge in this book can be considered timeless. Some best practices of this nature really never go out of style, and this book is packed with them.

But more than that, Chelis and Helmar have opened up a whole new approach to both portal and non-portal projects for the reader. If you are still looking for what you will learn, consider the following key themes that are covered:

Helping us learn about the capability and capacity of hosted solutions in the cloud

Helping us to understand which reusable industry assets are readily available

Providing instruction and guidance on how to use the latest tools for quickly delivering custom applications

Armed with this knowledge, portal solutions can be delivered to provide business value quicker and easier than ever before. The resulting applications can scale better, run cheaper, and be more easily managed than their predecessors. This in itself makes it more than worth the price of the book.

To the authors, I say Thanks guys, and to the reader I simply say, Enjoy!

Joey Bernal

Chief Technology Officer, Element Blue, LLC

Former Chief Programmer — IBM Intelligent Operations Center

About the Authors

Chelis Camargo has over 25 years of experience in IT consulting. He is a self-taught technology enthusiast and patent-awarded performance SME.

With over 10 years of portal experience as a Senior Lead Architect, he has led many large-scale, cross-domain, business- critical portal efforts with multimillion budgets. From proposals to business analysis to delivery, he has managed relations from the top executive business to the very technical level. Chelis has worked for the IBM Portals practice, and consulted for many IBM software divisions and business partners.

In his free time, his interests range from artificial intelligence to robotics, astronomy, Tesla, and quantum physics. Occasionally, he plays some rare percussion instruments, such as Cuíca (or kweeca) and Berimbau (or beɾĩˈbaw) . Above all, he enjoys spending quality time with his family, teaching, and playing with his son. More about him can be found on LinkedIn.

Helmar Martens holds a degree in Economics from Mackenzie Presbyterian University, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Helmar has been working with WebSphere Portal and WEF (formerly WPF) since 2000, when he joined Bowstreet, the company which originally created WEF. Helmar has also worked for IBM in several capacities including that of Lead Support Engineer, Technical Sales Specialist, and IT Specialist.

As a Senior WEF Specialist and Portal Architect, Helmar has worked in projects for clients such as NASA, Citibank, New York City Department of Education, Swiss Reinsurance, and other customers in US, Europe, and Asia.

Currently, Helmar lives in Texas, where he enjoys a wonderful Texan social and cultural atmosphere.

I want to thank God for the blessing of writing this book, as well as for the gift of eternal life through his son, Jesus Christ.

I also want to thank my beloved wife, Simone Martens, who has been an inspiration and is my greatest motivator, not only to write this book, but above all, in life.

About the Reviewers

Joey Bernal is a Managing Partner and Chief Technology Officer of Element Blue, LLC, an award winning IBM business partner. Joey is a leader and veteran of IBM software and solutions, and was formally the Chief Programmer of IBM's Intelligent Operations Center (IOC). His extensive background in portal architecture, and development and enterprise application architecture was applied to leading the IOC design and development. Prior to that, Joey was a Technical Leader for the WebSphere Portal Software Services team for IBM. He has assisted in many technical areas, especially IBM cross-brand opportunities with WebSphere and WebSphere Portal solutions within an enterprise context.

He is the author of many popular books and articles including, Web 2.0 and Social Networking for the Enterprise, Application Architecture for WebSphere, and Programming Portlets. Joey has a B.Sc. in Computer Sciences from the University of Montana and is completing his Masters at Regis University.

Philip Cheshire is an Application Developer specializing in IBM WebSphere Portal technology. He has been working with the portal for over eight years, in the grocery and insurance industries. In addition to portal development, Philip also offers a wide range of consulting services related to Java and Android development. Learn more about Philip by visiting http://philipcheshire.com/.

Mark Polly, in the past 28 years of his experience in IT, has worked in roles such as Strategist, Technical Architect, and Developer in large companies (Eli Lilly, KeyBank, Progressive), and has been consulting for the past 15 years with Perficient. Mark is currently a Director in Perficient's Portal and Social Company Wide Practice. He primarily works on strategy engagements as they relate to portal, collaboration, and social technologies. Mark holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Purdue University, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Cleveland State University. His current company Perficient's work includes many different portal types and, vendors, and the integration to a variety of technologies, social capabilities, and mobile sites.

Mark was referenced in the book, Lotus Notes Developer Toolbox: Tips for Rapid and Successful Deployment, by Mark Elliott, which was published on October 10, 2006 at IBM Press. You can find more information about this book at http://www.ibmpressbooks.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0132214482.

Mark has also written several articles for IBM developerWorks, which can be found at (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/).

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Preface

IBM WebSphere® Portal is a cost- effective, scalable, and proven solution for the portal enterprise space. Given the depth and the breadth of WebSphere Portal and the challenges of developing a portal project, you need a book that covers all the nuances of the entire portal project lifecycle. This book accomplishes just that.

In this book, we cover topics that range from portal assessment, governance, and architecture, to design and development. These topics are covered not only within these traditional areas, but also within the cloud environment context. Keeping both contexts in mind, several chapters are dedicated to portal and portlet testing, troubleshooting, performance monitoring, best practices, and tuning. The cloud option is also analyzed and discussed for hosting, developing, and publishing portal applications.

We also cover Web Experience Factory (WEF) as the tool of choice for portlet development. We take you from the introduction to the development of advanced portlets in an intuitive and efficient manner. We cover not only common topics, such as builders, models, and user interface development, but also advanced topics, such as Dojo builders, Ajax techniques, and WEF performance.

Within the WEF space, we cover other topics, which have never been covered before by any other competing book. You will learn how to develop multichannel applications, including web mobile applications, and you will learn about the model types available for portlet development, including when and how to utilize them. We also present and discuss numerous aspects and facets of implementing a WEF project and what it takes to successfully deliver them.

The richness and the profundity of the topics combined with an intuitive and well-structured presentation of the chapters will provide you with all the information you need to master your skills with the IBM WebSphere Portal project lifecycle and Web Experience Factory.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Portal Assessment, covers the initial assessment of a portal project to a proof of value or concept exercise. It looks at the cloud as a possible paradigm for portal applications. It ends up with a case study that leverages the IBM Toolbox and Portal Accelerator Banking template to illustrate it in a step-by-step way.

Chapter 2, Portal Governance: Adopting the Mantra of Business Performance through IT Execution, covers the importance of portal governance and the best practices aligned with management and processes, to support at the enterprise level. It looks at steps to formulate and implement a portal governance committee and its associated roles.

Chapter 3, Portal Requirements Engineering, covers requirements engineering in the context of application lifecycle management. It provides step-by-step guidelines for functional and nonfunctional lifecycles, from requirements gathering to validation.

Chapter 4, Portal Architecture: Analysis and Design, covers another iterative step in a development lifecycle. It is time to take the requirements and exercise architectural analysis and design for both the functional and nonfunctional aspects, as they are mapped to portal capabilities.

Chapter 5, Portal Golden and Cloud Architecture, covers the best practices in building portal environments for high availability, and delivering the operationalization of the business models. In the context of traditional and cloud-hosted environments. It also looks at the best practices of modeling for portal capacity planning and sizing.

Chapter 6, Portal Build, Deployment, and Release Management, covers the interdisciplinary aspect of build, deploy, and release management in the context of traditional and cloud environments. It covers best practices for build and release management, portal tools and provides a high-level step-by-step release process for WEF and WP.

Chapter 7, Introduction to Web Experience Factory, will introduce Web Experience Factory (WEF) along with its main concepts — model, builder, and profile. We also cover the concept of regeneration of WEF applications and the details of its development environment. We finish this chapter by demonstrating how to create a WEF project and how a portlet can be deployed to WebSphere Portal directly from the development environment.

Chapter 8, Service Layers, covers WEF features to support the service-oriented development pattern. We explain the Service Consumer/Provider development pattern, and at the same time, we discuss the list of builders available to implement such a pattern. We also develop two sample models to demonstrate the utilization of this approach.

Chapter 9, Invoking Web Service, shows you how to implement Service Provider models, which can access web services. We cover the powerful and versatile Web Service builder call in detail, and explain how you can build a Service Provider model, which retrieves data through a web service. We also cover the WEF mechanisms available to transform and manipulate response data. A sample model is developed to demonstrate the utilization of this builder.

Chapter 10, Building the Application User Interface, focuses on how WEF builds user interface models. We explain in detail how WEF builds the application user interface. We cover a multitude of UI development-related topics, such as the data-driven development approach, high-level and low-level builders, design pane, and the Rich Data Definition builder call. We also develop a sample model to demonstrate the utilization of the new and incredible Data Service User Interface builder call.

Chapter 11, The Dojo Builders and Ajax, takes you to a journey into the incredible world of Dojo and Ajax. We demonstrate how WEF uses these technologies to provide cutting-edge builders and techniques that will make your applications not only look like, but also behave like the latest Web 2.0 applications. We also explain the performance benefits associated with the utilization of Dojo Builder calls and Ajax techniques. Two sample models enable you to get hands-on experience with both Dojo and Ajax.

Chapter 12, WEF Profiling, covers one of the pillars of WEF technology — profiling. We explain what profiling is, how it works, and how you can take advantage of this powerful technology to provide variability to your application. In addition to covering a profile set and profile, we dissect the profile set editor and all of its elements and nuances. We finish this chapter by working on an extensive sample, which illustrates the richness of profiling, and the numerous manners in which it can enhance your application, addresses requirement challenges, and reduces development costs.

Chapter 13, Types of Models, identifies and discusses the different model types a developer can use in order to develop an efficient application. No other WEF book has ever presented this topic. We demonstrate why it is important to use different model types to develop an application. We then clearly define when and how each of the available model types can be efficiently used to develop reusable, well-organized, and well-structured applications.

Chapter 14, WEF and Mobile Web Applications, addresses the development of web applications not only for mobile devices, but also, above all, for multichannel applications. It analyzes the differences between the development of traditional and mobile web applications. This chapter presents the builders and the framework provided by WEF to develop multichannel applications. We also develop a sample application, which can be invoked from multiple devices, including mobile devices.

Chapter 15, How to Implement a Successful Portal Project with WEF, completes the WEF coverage in this book. We put together a rich set of observations and recommendations that should be followed by any portal project. These recommendations are the result of many years of experience working with WEF. We cover topics that range from the required skills to successfully implement a portal project with WEF, to the type of training and mentoring required, to the proper handling of source control all the way to the development of POCs and prototypes with WEF.

Chapter 16, Portlet and Portal Testing, covers some of the best practices in portal and portlet testing. The test-driven approach is discussed along with some of the techniques used for validating the compliance to a portal's functional and nonfunctional goals via testing.

Chapter 17, Portal and Portlet Performance Monitoring, covers the subject of monitoring, which allows one to measure the success of the portal based on the established criteria. Both business and technical monitoring are much needed capabilities to ensure the right visibility, which allows for the tracking of goals and KPIs. It also covers the tools and metrics to be used during this process.

Chapter 18, Portal Troubleshooting, covers the main approaches for classifying, isolating, and resolving portal problems via troubleshooting and problem determination. It also covers tooling and the best practices applied to troubleshooting.

Chapter 19, Portal, WEF, and Portlet Tuning, covers mature processes for tuning lifecycles and test cases. It covers aspects related to the response time, throughput, and bottleneck resolution. It gives real samples of common bottlenecks and how to tune them.

Chapter 20, Portal Post-production, covers post-production of the main areas of APM, training, impersonation, and the potential benefits of a cloud-based solution. It provides an insight into the continuing support and processes around portal maintenance after the first production deployment.

What you need for this book

This book is comprised of two complementing segments. One segment covers the numerous aspects of implementing an IBM WebSphere Portal project and all its nuances. The other segment addresses the development of portlets using Web Experience Factory.

For the segment related to portal projects, no prior knowledge or experience with the portal is required. Of course, you will benefit even more from reading this segment if you have been exposed to the portal technology.

Equally, for the WEF segment, no prior experience is required. However, if you have not been exposed to WEF development before, we recommend you read and complete a couple of introductory WEF tutorials to maximize your understanding of the material and the exercises we develop. The standard installation of WEF offers a couple of useful tutorials that can provide you with the initial foundation on WEF.

While portal knowledge is not required, some basic knowledge of IBM WebSphere Portal is desirable. This basic knowledge can then be leveraged and advanced towards understanding how WEF powerfully and cooperatively works with IBM WebSphere Portal.

For the WEF chapters, access to a running installation of IBM WebSphere Portal Version 7 is required. An instance of WEF should also be installed on the same machine along with WebSphere Portal. WEF 7.0.0 will suffice for all chapters except for Chapter 14, WEF and Mobile Web Applications. For this chapter, you need at least version 7.0.1.

Who this book is for

This book is for portal architects, specialists, developers, WEF architects, testers, project managers, and business owners as well. Because it covers business and technical aspects, it can be applicable to any portal business or technical stakeholder.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different