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"

I just created a new voice over screencast on how to develop portlets using PortalPack 2.0 Beta with NetBeans 6.0 Beta 1 and GlassFish V2.
The screencast demonstrates how to develop a simple portlet using PortalPack and deploy it on OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0 Beta. Check it out

Vihang was at Glassfish day in Beijing to talk about OpenPortal. His talk was well received and participants showed a lot of interest in OpenPortal's new features. You can read more here

1. Vihang's blog: OpenPortal@Beijing
2. Carla King's Blog
3. Arun Gupta's Blog

Deepak, Uma, Manish and Satya have written an article that describes the new features of JSR 286 as defined in the public draft. The article also contains samples(both source and binary) for the new features.

In order to the deploy and try the samples you need Portlet Container 2.0 beta.

Download the Java Application Platform SDK Update 3 Beta that contains Portlet Container 2.0 Beta.