Len Barker

by Len Barker, Managing Partner - Lotus Practice
 

Just when you thought you had WebSphere Portal themes figured out along came WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 and 7.0.  The addition of the PortalWeb2 theme in Portal 6.1.5 ushered in an era of client side aggregation into themes and hence new tools for designing themes.  Portal 7 introduces WebDav access to theme elements and yet another way to manipulate themes.  IBM's documentation will tell you that these changes give the developer unprecedented control over themes.  This is true, but not until you understand what is going on.

Let's start with a quick review of theme design in WebSphere Portal 6.0.x 
 

In this version of Portal, the theme elements are all rendered by the server.  Since there is one location responsible for rendering all theme components it is reasonably easy to figure out what is going on.  IBM's themes are located in [wp_profile root]\installedApps\wps.ear\wps.war\themes\.  Each theme contains Default.jsp which is where all of the action begins.  Becoming familiar with Default.jsp is critical to theme development in any Portal version.  The IBM White Paper entitled "Developing Themes and Skins in WebSphere Portal 6.0.x" is required reading if you are new to theme development.

Web 2.0 themes were introduced in Portal 6.1.5 as a way of giving the developer access to the dojo toolkit for rendering the dynamic portions of the theme.  In other words, some parts of the theme are static (e.g. the banner graphics, background colors, etc) and others change often (e.g. the top and side navigation elements).  Rather than requiring the entire page to refresh when the dynamic elements change, the Web 2.0 theme uses dojo (javascript functions) on the client (client side aggregation) to refresh only the portion of the page that needs refreshing.  While that is a great experience for the end user it introduces more moving parts for the developer.  I found a good article on the Web 2.0 theme that illustrates which portions of the theme are now aggregated on the client side and which are still rendered by the server.   

For the pieces that are rendered by the client this is a quick summary of how it works:

1. Default.jsp loads
2. There are several placeholders in Default.jsp that will replaced by the client side code (e.g. <c:if test="${!renderPlaceholdersOnly}">)
3. Default.jsp calls head_extras.jspf which initializes the client side dojo libraries through its' bootstrap function
4. The dojo libraries (located in the dojo_resources.ear) do all of the necessary logic and create an xml ouput of what needs to be displayed.  For more on the two version of dojo included in Portal 6.1.5 and 7 read the info center chapter on the subject.
5. The xml is rendered as html using xsl stylesheets (located in the xsl directory under your themes root directory)

If you ever find some need to change the javascript functions (located under Dojo_Resources.ear\dojo.war\com\ibm) that do the client side rendering be aware that the individual javascript files that are listed in the directory structure are there for documentation only.  Your code changes would have to be made to ibmCSA.js.uncompressed (located under Dojo_Resources.ear\dojo.war\com) and then use a javascript compression tool to compress that file into ibmCSA.js.  After you do that you will have to stop and start the Dojo_Resources.ear from Portal's application server console.

Hopefully this overview will jumpstart your understanding of how themes work in Portal 6.1.5.  I will save the Portal 7 discussion for another day.

by Dave Jacob, Managing Partner, WebSphere Practice

Dave Jacob

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Peter Wilkerson

The recent release of OmniFind Enterprise Edition (OEE v9.1)  makes it clear that if you want to create your own user interface for the OEE server, you need to do so as a REST client.   This is part of a larger trend within IBM to make remotely hosted resources available via RESTful services.
 

SIAPI (Search & Index API), the IBM work horse API used in the past to interact with OEE, now only works with what are called "classic search collections" (basically pre-v9.1 collections which have been imported into v.9.1). There is also the limitation that the SIAPI jars can be used only on a server on which OEE is installed.  Additionally, I read in OEE's sister product, IBM Content Analytics, that the SIAPI is deprecated with release v2.2 and will not be supported in future releases.

While I have not seen any news on SIAPI being deprecated within OEE, I believe the trend is that it will be deprecated sooner rather than later.

Bottom Line: Design OEE search interface using REST and not SIAPI

Designing a New Search Interface using REST

The exciting part about IBM increasing the number of products providing  RESTful service is that we can build more powerful, customized tooling for our clients.

Take OEE for instance.  With OEE v9.1  we can build a search tool which goes considerably beyond a Google-esque listing of pages-and-pages of search results (which often is not helpful if you don't find what you want at the top of the list).  We can unleash OEE's power as a search platform by separating it from its user interface through the  REST service and extend the search interface.

As a result of this uncoupling we have an opportunity to build a powerful, intelligent enterprise search interface when using OEE with WebSphere Portal.  Since we would be building a query object within a portlet and receiving the result object within a portlet we have an opportunity to interact with both objects and  trigger different actions within Portal based on their contents.

For example, we could populate two portlets with search results.  The first would be results based on the search entered.  The second portlet could contain results based on a query augmented by search filters optimized based on a person's user group credentials.

This means that a person in HR searching would see results in a secondary "HR Search Portlet" more relevant to them. A person in the Marketing would see results in a "Marketing Search Portlet" with documents more relevant to their needs.  In essence, we are making search more relevant to each user by developing different search profiles optimized for each group.

The interface would help users focus on the real purpose of search - finding information they need as quickly as possible to complete the task at hand.

With the ability to build such a powerful and intelligent search interface, this is an incredible business opportunity for the enterprise to take advantage of.  

Selected Resources:

• OmniFind Enterprise Edition, v9.1
• Enable REST with Web services, Part 1: REST and Web services in WSDL 2.0
• Sample Axis2 REST client

Deborah Corcoran

by Deborah Corcoran, National Practice Manager for Resource Deployment Services to IBM 
 

In closing out 2010, Davalen had a huge uptick in resource staffing requests across the board in all IBM software applications - everything from upgrades to new application integrations. Despite the international economic challenges, IT staffing held strong.  Davalen customers know that we are the "go to" Business Partner for all things IBM, especially when it comes to our highly skilled and IBM certified consultants.

Q1 is starting out very strong and trending toward more staffing opportunities that are longer in term. The contracting resource requests coming across are for projects that are much more expanded in length than in previous years, especially for Q1/Q2. Customers have started to focus on projects that were set to launch in Q4, but didn't seem to either get the funding or time ran out due to holiday schedules.

The big push so far is for Lotus Notes Connections installs and integrations with various other IBM software applications such as WebSphere. The WebSphere space seems to be really taking the lead in Q1 as is Portlet Factory.  More and more of our customers are inquiring about our Portlet Factory practice and how they can integrate this application into their current environment. 

Our New Years momentum brings us right into our countdown for Lotusphere 2011! Davalen will be exhibiting for the 4th year in a row at Booth # 221. Lotusphere is always such a great venue to share stories and gain important industry information, so please stop by and say "hello."

As always, please don't hesitate to contact us for of your IT Staffing requirements and I look forward to seeing you at Lotusphere!