Course Description
In this hands-on lab course, students develop and test portlet applications targeted for deployment on IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0. The student will work with the JSR 168 portlet specification and developed portlets using the development and testing facilities that are part of IBM Rational Application Developer Version 7.0. Students will work with portal integration technologies such as portlet services, the portal credential vault, composite applications, personalization, cooperative portlets and business process integration.

Class Length
4 days
Who will benefit from this course
The target audience for this course is IBM customers, Independent Software Vendors, Systems Integrators, and IBM technical staff members, including architects and developers responsible for developing solutions using IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.

Prerequisites
The prerequisites for this course include J2EE application development skills, specifically servlet and JSP development experience. Basic knowledge of portals and WebSphere Portal, acquired by completing IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 Fundamentals (WP010)

Course Outline

This course covers the following topics:

Introducing WebSphere Portal

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and User Integration
• Portals: Their use and function
• Portlets: A model for content and service aggregation
• WebSphere Portal V6.0 features
• WebSphere Portal V6.0 architecture overview
• The offerings and packaging of WebSphere Portal V6 and IBM Workplace
• Roles associated with the portal enterprise

Understanding the development environment

• Major features of Portal and Portlet tools in IBM Rational
• Application Developer Version 7.0
• Development topologies – portal test environment

Introducing JSR 168: portlet API

• What is a portlet
• JSR 168 portlet container
• Portlet life cycle
• Portlet modes and window states
• Portlet packaging and deployment descriptor

Introducing JSR 168: core objects

• The javax.portlet package tree
• Two-phase processing of portlets (processAction() and render() methods)
• The core Java interfaces associated with portlets
• Addressing portlets via URL
• Managing portlet modes and window states
• Handling portlet exceptions

Introducing JSR 168: configuration objects

• Working with portlet preferences
• Preference validation
• Portlet request dispatcher
• Namespace management and URL encoding (contributing only part of the page mark-up)

Introducing JSR 168 JSP tag libraries and internationalization

• Portlet tag library
• The use of JSTL tag libraries in portlets
• Supporting internationalization in portlets

Introducing JSR 168: action processing

• Two-phase request processing in portlets
• The action phase and working with portlet API objects
• Strategies for application organization with the two-phase architecture
• JavaServer Faces (JSF) in portlet applications
• JSF framework
• Building faces portlets in IBM Rational Application Developer V7.0
• Working with page data and the JSF pagecode file
• Working with the Properties and Quick Edit views
• The JSF UI components

Understanding Portlet services

• The role of portlet services in WebSphere Portal architecture
• Accessing portlet services from portlets
• Creating and deploying custom portlet services

Using the Credential vault service

• Overview of SSO and WebSphere Portal
• The credential vault architecture
• Working with the credential vault from portlet applications

Customizing Portal through branding: the portal development tools

• Portal projects
• Creating custom portal themes
• Creating custom portal skins
• Building portal objects (pages, application templates) and exporting to a portal

Using The property broker service (cooperative portlets)

• The property broker architecture
• Building target portlets
• Building source portlets
• Wiring portlets

Understanding Composite applications and personalization in WebSphere Portal

• What is a composite application
• The APIs for building business components
• Customizing portlet behavior – points of variability
• Personalization support in WebSphere Portal
• Adding content spots to portlets

Integrating people and business processes

• Overview of business processes
• The Human Task Manager
• Tooling support for building task processing portlets
• People integration services
• Access integration and collaboration in WebSphere Portal
• Alternative paths for buying, customizing and building portlets
• More on out-of-the-box services in WebSphere Portal

Integrating AJAX in Portlet Applications

• Introduction to AJAX technology
• Integrating AJAX in a portlet application

Identifying Portlet Development Best Practices

• Summarizing Best Practices of concern to portlet application developers
• Caching and other performance considerations