Thomas Schaeck

WebSphere portal: unified user access to content, applications and services

Portals provide end users with unified access to content, applications, and collaboration services in a highly personalized manner. WebSphere Portal provides a middleware framework and tools for building and managing portals using component applications called portlets. In this paper we provide an overview of WebSphere Portal and describe its role in modern information technology systems. We describe its highlevel architecture and main features, we detail some of its advanced features, and we outline directions for its future development.

WSXL: A Web Services Language for Integrating End-User Experience

WSXL (Web Services Experience Language) is a web services centric component model for interactive web applications. WSXL is designed to achieve two main goals: enable businesses to distribute web applications through multiple revenue channels, and enable new services or applications to be created by leveraging existing applications across the Web. To accomplish these goals, WSXL components can be built out of three basic web service types for data, presentation, and control, the last of which is used to “wire together” the others using declarative language based on XLink and XML Events. WSXL also introduces a new description language for adapting services to new distribution channels. WSXL is built on widely accepted established and emerging open standards, and is designed to be independent of execution platform, browser, and presentation markup.