Portal Patterns Ladder of Functionality

Ladder of functionality

Types of Portal functionality integration.

Step 1: functional portlet rendering –

this is where the portlet carries real functionality and enables you to interact with an application/content within the portlet. A noddy example, popular with portal vendor is an interactive share price - allowing you type in a stock name and get it's current value and a graph of its performance all returned within the porlet

Step 2: intelligent aggregation –

this is where the porlet builds an intelligent picture of the content you want to see. Using the share price analogy again, the portlet would build provide you just with the share prices you want to see drawing them from web content/applications.

Step 3 dumb aggregation –

this is where the portlet provides a simple window through to an existing bit of content without any intelligence. Sticking with share prices, an example of dumb aggregation might be the portlet displaying the top five share increases by 'pointing' the window at this in a external web page. The key here is that, even with dumb aggregation the content displayed will change as the top five share change

Step 4 static links / static content –

pretty much what it says on the tin, a portlet containing a set of links to other content / applications or other simple static content with the portlet. The content here never changes unless the portal administrators go in and edit it.

In reality most portlets contain combinations - so a functional portlet may let you perform your most common everyday interactions with an application but it will also contain a static link to take you to the application for other interactions.

Portlet design realization

The process steps we went through to determine how each portlet is finally realised. I know it started with the output from the requirements capture and audience mapping and then went through a series of steps that included some of the stuff we talked about on the call, such as....

Technical feasibility and cost

Usecase for the applications

Original user requirements

Adherence to architectural standards

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