An open source web site featuring shared resources for implementation of the JCP JSR 168 and WSRP OASIS standards has been announced by Plumtree Software, Documentum, BEA Systems Inc., and Sun Microsystems. The Portlet Open Source Trading Site (POST) "aims to help companies kickstart their portal deployments, leading to faster time to value for all portal customers by providing open source portlets and a forum to exchange and learn about how these emerging new standards. Separate areas within POST are provided for sharing JSR-168 and WSRP portlets. As with any open-source site on SourceForge.net, any registered organization can contribute portlets to POST, which become available to all other members of the open-source community. Using POST, participants can see lists of newly available portlets, post requests to the community for the development of new portlets, search for portlets, upload new portlets, download available portlets, submit modified or enhanced versions of downloaded portlets, and discuss portlet development best practices, issues and solutions. Both the JCP (ava Community Process) and OASIS, the standard bodies that developed JSR 168 and WSRP respectively, have expressed support for the POST open-source site. The site will help companies learn from their industry peers and share best practices for developing standards-based portlets."

About WSRP

"The Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) specification defines the Web services interfaces and semantics for interactive, presentation-oriented content services. This allows the content consumers, such as portals, to access conformant services without requiring service-specific code."

WSRP benefits content aggregators by eliminating the need for content aggregators to choose between locally hosting a content source or writing code specific to each remote content source. Rather, WSRP allows content to be hosted in the environment most sensible for its execution while still being easily accessed by content aggregators.

WSRP enables content producers to maintain control over the code that formats the presentation of their content. This reduces the distribution of updates problem frequently faced today. In addition, by reducing the cost for content aggregators to access their content, WSRP increases the rate at which content sources may be easily integrated into pages for end-users..." [adapted from the spec]

Web Services for Remote Portlets Specification. Approved OASIS Standard. August 2003. Edited by Alan Kropp (Vignette Corporation), Carsten Leue (IBM Corporation), and Rich Thompson (IBM Corporation). Contributors include: Chris Braun (Novell), Jeff Broberg (Novell), Mark Cassidy (Netegrity), Michael Freedman (Oracle Corporation), Timothy N. Jones (CrossWeave), Thomas Schaeck (IBM Corporation), and Gil Tayar (WebCollage). Document identifier: 'wsrp-specification-1.0'. 86 pages.

The WSRP version 1.0 WSDL documents provide details for of each of the operations and XML messages exchanged by compliant services.

• Interfaces. This WSDL defines the portType definitions for this specification. These definitions form the urn:oasis:names:tc:wsrp:v1:intf namespace.
• Bindings. This WSDL provides the standard binding definitions for this specification. These definitions form the urn:oasis:names:tc:wsrp:v1:bind namespace.
• Schema. The XML Schema defines the type, message and fault definitions for this specification. These definitions form the urn:oasis:names:tc:wsrp:v1:types namespace.

About JSR 168

A portal is a web based application that -- commonly -- provides personalization, single sign on, content aggregation from different sources and hosts the presentation layer of Information Systems. Aggregation is the action of integrating content from different sources within a web page. A portal may have sophisticated personalization features to provide customized content to users. Portal pages may have different set of portlets creating content for different users..."

A portlet is a Java technology based web component, managed by a portlet container, that processes requests and generates dynamic content. Portlets are used by portals as pluggable user interface components that provide a presentation layer to Information Systems..." [adapted from the Version 1.0 spec]

As proposed: "The [JSR 168] Portlet specification will define a Portlet API that provides means for aggregating several content sources and applications front ends. It will also address how the security and personalization is handled. Portlets are web components -like Servlets- specifically designed to be aggregated in the context of a composite page. Usually, many Portlets are invoked to in the single request of a Portal page. Each Portlet produces a fragment of markup that it s combined with the markup of other Portlets, all within the Portal page markup. The Portlet specification will define the different components for Portal Computing, their interaction, lifecycle and semantics. These components will comprise -- but they will not be restricted to -- Portlets, Deployment descriptor, Portlet APIs. In addition, APIs for vendor extensions, APIs for security, user customization and layout management will be considered. Also, it will define the minimum set of possible window states for a Portlet such as normal, minimized, maximized, etc.-, the valid state transitions and Portlet modes (such as view, edit, help, configure) per markup language..."

Java Portlet Specification Version 1.0. JSR-000168 Portlet Specification, Final Release. Version 1.0. October 7, 2003. 132 pages. Edited by Alejandro Abdelnur (Sun Microsystems) and Stefan Hepper (IBM).

JSR 168 Portlet Specification Reference Implementation. Send email to 'tck-support-request@sun.com' for information about the Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), available to Qualified Not-for-Profits and Qualified Individuals for no charge as per Section F.III of the JSPA 2.

From the POST Open Source Announcement

Enterprise software vendors Plumtree Software, Documentum, BEA Systems Inc., and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the industry's first open-source site for organizations to share portlets developed according to the new JCP JSR 168 and WSRP OASIS standards. Available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/portlet-opensrc/, the site is hosted by SourceForge, an independent organization that hosts a variety of Java technology and Linux open-source initiatives. Plumtree, Documentum, BEA and Sun will provide an initial library of standards-based portlets, and will provide ongoing feedback, suggestions and best practices for successful JSR 168 and WSRP portlet development. The site is open to all organizations, including customers and partners of competing portal software providers such as IBM, Vignette and SAP. Both the JCP and OASIS, the standard bodies that developed JSR 168 and WSRP respectively, today expressed support for the open-source site, known as the Portlet Open-Source Trading site, or POST. The site will help companies learn from their industry peers and share best practices for developing standards-based portlets.

"Plumtree conceived of this site as part of its Radical Openness strategy, which is our long-term commitment to ensure that every major component of our solution is interoperable with customers' existing technologies, even technologies that compete with our own," said Glenn Kelman, vice president of product marketing and management for Plumtree. "Today, Plumtree, BEA, Documentum and Sun are working together to support the freedom to build application components on any application server and assemble them into applications within any portal. The POST site provides a forum for portlet development that is unprecedented in the industry."

"Documentum was one of the first vendors to support an open environment in which portals, collaboration, content management and search could work together to support every Web application in the enterprise," said Whitney Tidmarsh, vice president and general manager of Web Content and Document Management for Documentum. "Now as standards have emerged to allow components of those technologies to become interoperable, Documentum is working with Plumtree, BEA and Sun to ensure that customers have a forum for sharing these components, regardless of the platform for which they were originally developed."

"The SourceForge initiative represents a tremendous opportunity for developers to work with leading vendors to create an extensive, open ecosystem of 'pluggable' portlets," said Byron Sebastian, vice president and general manager for WebLogic Workshop and WebLogic Portal at BEA Systems. "Open-source portlets can also help customers kick-start their portal deployments, bringing faster time to value to all users of portal technologies. BEA's support for this initiative demonstrates our continued focus on making it easier for partners and developers to extend and expand the value of the standards-based WebLogic platform."

"As co-leader of the JSR 168 specification, Sun continues to promote the growth of open-source portal standards through its efforts on java.net and its support for POST," said Mike Bellissimo, senior director, Software Developer Marketing and Management for Sun Microsystems. "Open-source collaboration is a significant step towards establishing widespread adoption of portlets based on JSR 168."

"Gartner has long envisioned the portal, plus its surrounding ecosystem, as an environment in which components for building applications can be created by different parties and, through standards, re-assembled into new user experiences," said Gartner Research Director, Ray Valdes. "The emergence of portlet standards combined with a means for sharing standards-based portlets will potentially provide great benefit to portal customers by increasing choice and reducing cost."

"The OASIS WSRP Technical Committee worked from the outset to ensure our Web services interface would provide efficient access to portlets developed using the emerging JSR 168 standard, as well as other platforms, such as .NET. With open-source efforts for hosting portlets underway (Apache Foundation pluto and wsrp4j projects), clearly the next step is sites focused on developing portlets," said Rich Thompson of IBM, chair of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee. "POST is such a site. Its launching so soon after WSRP was approved as an OASIS standard is another clear indication of the marketplace's readiness to adopt WSRP." The official work of the OASIS WSRP TC can be reviewed online.

"JCP is delighted to see the success its standards initiatives are having in the industry," said Onno Kluyt, director, JCP, Project Management Office. "This Web site underscores the importance developers attach to compatible implementations of JSRs and is an opportunity to share the results of the community work with an ever growing constituency of developers."