In this screencast, you will learn how to:

1. Perform human workflow interaction with Java Composite Application Platform Suite workflow engine
2. Add SAW plug-in in NetBeans IDE,
3. Create a simple web application using the drag and drop features in SAW plug-in 
4. Create a simple a simple SAW portlet, which lists tasks based on task ID
   

The community feature of Project WebSynergy has been semantically enabled. This is a preview version of that.
This is taking the first step towards Web3.0 enablement.

So whats the Semantic Web ??
The semantic web is an evolving extension of the world wide web, in which web content can be expressed not only in a natural language but also in a format that can be read and used by machines for processing the information. It is w3c recommendation.

As a human when we write and read a blob of text, we know what it means but a machine reading a bunch of characters has no idea as to what it means. 

For the machine to be as intelligent as humans to decipher similar information from the text, there has to be some kind of information that the machine has to be provided with. This "extra" information is traditionally provided as meta-data in the form of tags, microformats or some other means. A much more structured and scientific way of applying metadata to a blurb of text is via what is called an ontology.

The community feature of Project WebSynergy allows you to add blog entries, wiki pages and message boards.

Refer to my blog on how to create a community in Project WebSynergy.
For an idea of what a Semantic Community Portal is, see here.

In a Project WebSynergy community, when the user creates a blog entry or a wiki page, he/she can optionally associate it with an ontology element (which acts as the metadata).
When the user views the blog entry, the other semantically related blog entries and wiki pages are displayed. The search for the related entires is not a key word search, but a semantic search done by the reasoner. The semantic reasoner infers the related ontology elements and we can see the blog entries and wiki pages for which  the related ontology elements have been applied to.

An example of the Semantic Community Portal is shown in the screen-casts.

 This blog describes the steps to create a community in Project WebSynergy.

1. Login as admin@example.com/admin into Project WebSynergy
   Move your mouse over the "Welcome Admin User" message and click on Add Application
2. In the Add Application window that shows up, select the Communities under Community Section. You can also type "communities" in the search content text box. Click on "Add" or drag and drop the portlet into one of your tabs. The communitiy portlet is now added to your tab.
   
3. Click on Add Community button.
4. Enter name (say Synergy) and click on Save. The community is created with the name that you specified.
   Click on "Available Communities" sub-tab.
5. For the community that you just created, click on the "Actions" button and select "Manage Pages".
   Enter name for the community page (say MySynergyPage ) and click on "Add Page".
6. Click on View Pages.
   To this community page, you can add the any  portlets. For eg.
       Blog Portlet
       Blogs Aggregator Portlet
       Wiki Portlet
       Message Boards Portlet
   
7. All these portlets are available under the Colloboration section in Add Application window

There is a preview version of the WebSynergy plug-in available at Portal Pack project site. This NetBeans plug-in supports portlet development and deployment on the new WebSynergy and also works with Liferay. For more details read here...

ProjectWebSynergy, will redifine the term portal. It will be a widget platform and will natively support other programming and web technologies, like Ruby and PHP. Java, Ruby and PHP widgets not only co-exist on a portal page, but also inter-communicate. And all this is made so easy using Portal Pack NetBeans plugins.

For more on this, read here. But wait..., if seeing is believing, visit us at the JavaONE 2008 booth if you are in San Francisco or the Bay area.
 

Another addition to the porlet-repository is the Suggest and Search Portlet . It is a JSR286 portlet that provides search related suggestions as the user types words and search results  from the web (using Ajax and serveResource)based on Yahoo Contextual Search and  Yahoo Web Search Service API.  The portlet makes REST client calls to the services, parses the results in XML /JSON format and displays them to the user. 

This has been tested on the Open Source Portlet Container 2.0. Check this blog post and  the wiki page for more details.

The OpenPortal WSRP Project v2 milestone 3 is now available for download.  The OpenPortal WSRP Project version 2.0 is now feature complete and will be OASIS WSRP specification compliant whenever the OASIS WSRP specification would be approved.

The OpenPortal WSRP v2 milestone 3 previews the following features, some defined in OASIS WSRP version 2.0 specification.

1. WSRP 2.0 getResource
2. WSRP 2.0 Caching
   1. Markup Caching
   1. Expiration Markup Caching
   2. Validation Markup Caching
      
   2. Resource Caching
   1. Expiration Resource Caching
   2. Validation Resource Caching
      
3. Tomcat 5.5 support
4. Migrated code to the latest WSRP 2.0 schema

You can download the OpenPortal WSRP version 2.0 milestone 3 from the project download page.

This is the last major milestone build from the OpenPortal WSRP Project, the future milestones are expected not to add any major new features to the WSRP version 2.0 implementation rather provide pluggable extensions mechanisms to consuming portals to implement some of the WSRP version 2.0 features such as Portlet Management, CC/PP etc.  

Here are some of the documents that are related to this milestone

1. Whats new in milestone 3
   
2. WSRP installation on Glassfish
3. Milestone 3 preview document
4. WSRP installation on Tomcat
5. WSRP User Guide
   

Stay tuned on the future milestones of the OpenPortal WSRP version 2.0 project. If you would like to keep track of future announcements and additions to the OpenPortal WSRP Project, please subscribe to the announce@wsrp.dev.java.net alias.

If you have questions on how to use the OpenPortal WSRP Project and other comments/suggestions/requests, we urge you to join the users@wsrp.dev.java.net alias.

Please report any issues that you encounter while trying OpenPortal WSRP version 2.0 milestone 3 to issues@wsrp.dev.java.net.

I am sure we all want to know more about OpenPortal Portal Server. How does OpenPortal Portal Server work, how does it handle content, is there workflow in it? What are the upcoming features around it?
 To know all this and more, do check out the following sessions @ Sun Tech Days @ Hyderabad

1. OpenPortal Portal Server
2. OpenPortal Consumables.

Its a great chance to know OpenPortal!!! Be there!!!

Here is a new voice-over screencast that demonstrates the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) feature in Sun Java System Portal Server. In this screencast, I have explained how to create a WSRP Producer, Consumer, and a channel/container to publish remote portlets in Sun Java System Portal Server.

The screencast also explains interoperability feature, by demonstrating how to consume remote portlets from Netunity producer in Sun Java System Portal Server.

Go through the screencast and watch this space for OpenPortal WSRP version 2.0 implementation screencast, soon.

1. WSRP Eventing
2. Shared/Public render parameters
   

1. Install Instructions
2. User Guide
3. WSRP v2 Coordination samples

The OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0 Beta2 has been released. This release is based on JSR 286(Portlet 2.0) proposed final draft. This release contains following features and enhancements..

• Eventing
• Public Render Parameters
• Resource Serving
• Portlet Filters
• Validation based caching
• Request Dispatcher Include from all lifecycle
• Request Dispatcher Forward from all lifecycle
• Container Runtime Options that includes escapeXml and actionScopedRequestAttributes
• Taglibrary enhancements

Netbeans Portlet Pack 2.0 Beta2 is available that helps developers to develop, deploy and test portlets on the Portlet Container 2.0 Beta2.

1. Install Instructions
2. User Guide

1. Provides a base v2 implementation by porting v1 implementation to v2 schema's.
2. Provides both version 2.0 and version 1.0 WSRP Producer implementation.
3. Supports sharing of resources like registration-handle/portlet-handle across v1 and v2 WSRP Producer services.
4. Provides both version 1.0 and 2.0 implementation of Consumer.
5. Provides the necessary administrative interface to create a v1 or v2 Consumer.
6. Supports backward compatibility by supporting both v1 and v2 stacks.

 OpenPortal campaign @ Foss.IN's first day started with a bang at Bangalore. It was very well
received by the developer community. The BoF sessions were a hit which is evident from the fact that 2-3 BoF sessions needed to be conducted parallely.
OpenPortal team also gave a handout of all community projects under the OpenPortal umbrella. It also made a well-crafted survey received eagerly by the developer community. On the first day itself, we were able to collect around 80-90 responses.

The survey responses were very positive and almost everyone had something or the other to look forward to from Portal and wanted to at the least become an observer.

 BoF's gave a wonderful way of interacting with the community.

The enthusiasm received re-affirms the fact that the developer community and the market in general has been awaiting a cutting-edge Enterprise level OpenSource Portal Server.

Now FOSS.IN moves to penultimate day where we are trying our best to maintain the momentum.
 

Check out the BoF announcement booth which was marked as "BlockBuster"