Initially, all that’s available is the core infrastructure (plumbing, lighting, phone jacks, T1 line, etc.) There’s a security desk just inside the front door, but it’s manned by Tom. I like to think of Portal as an empty office building. It serves content to users but I find the true power of the Portal is placed in the hands of the developers. What makes WebSphere Portal special?Īs mentioned, WebSphere Portal is a glorified web application. Once you understand that WebSphere Portal is just a fancy web application, akin to Facebook, Yahoo, or EBay, you can easily build off of that foundation. It runs inside a Java EE application server and its job is to aggregate and deliver web content to any authorized users who access the system. WebSphere Portal is quite simply a Java Enterprise Application. In this article I plan to answer the following questions:Īs I step through each of my tasks I’ll be sure to address any Issues Encountered, Benefits and Enhancements over previous versions, and new features with Best practice advice. So in this article I’ll start with the basics and we’ll work our way up from there. If I can’t understand something then I can’t teach others about it. I feel it’s the only way I can understand. Whenever I face any new challenge, I’m compelled to break the problem down into its simplest elements. It wasn’t until I understood the basics of WebSphere Portal that my fears started to subside. When I first began, I felt overwhelmed by how much there was to learn. Getting started with Portal may seem a daunting challenge.