Re: Managing Java web apps using CMS

Ethan Michaels wrote:
> At our shop we are using J2EE to build Web apps. For example, we have 
> signup forms for some of our various programs implemented as servlet/JSP 
> applications. We will soon purchase a CMS. I am wondering how those two 
> things are going to go together. A lot of you probably know this 
> already, but with a J2EE application, what you do is package the whole 
> application into a ".war" file (.war : "Web archive") and place that 
> into the annointed directory of your application server (we're using 
> JRun). Every part of the app is inside this .war file — the program's 
> servlets and other supporting code in binary form (or the rough Java 
> equivalent), and the JSP files which are HTML pages with embedded Java 
> code and tags. Page headers and footers, nav bars, main content is all 
> tied up inside the .war file.
<snip>

When we began the design of our CMS product a year ago, we anticipated 
this and based our architecture around the upcoming portlet spec (what 
we did was to copy the IBM WPS 4.1 API which was the foundation for the 
Portlet API, JSR168). By doing this, and by writing ALL our own 
HTML-generation code as portlets using this API, we get native support 
for exactly what you're asking for.

When you buy our CMS you'll get a bunch of portlets we've written which 
do texts and fonts and navigation and such. Stuff related to CMS. Then 
you can deploy your own WAR file, and either implement your own portlet 
or use a wrapper portlet which simply does an include of your 
application, and then embed that into any page, just as you would with 
any of our own portlets. Your own portlets also show up integrated in 
the admin UI for the site, so there's really no way for the admin user 
to tell what are bundled portlets and what are custom ones. Because of 
the extremely loose and easy integration this provides it's really an 
excellent way to do it.

I just finished the first round of converting our internal API to the 
public draft of the Portlet API, and also all the portlets we bundle, 
and it was very easy to do, especially the portlets which were written 
as servlets(/JSPs) which used a generic include-portlet.

I expect that this is how all major Java CMS/portal vendors will allow 
custom extensions within a year from now. The others I expect to either 
die, or become even more proprietary in order to survive.

regards,
   Rickard

-- 
Rickard Öberg
rickard-CNn8dUF/[email protected]
Senselogic

Got blog? I do. http://dreambean.com

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