Coordination remains one of the most talked about topics with respect to portlets. And one of the popular means of enabling portlet coordination is via the event model.

The Eventing (also referred to as Inter-Portlet Communication) feature in the Sun Java System Portal Server as well as the decoupled Portlet Container component built out of the OpenPortal community now has tools support in the form of an IPC Story Board feature in the NetBeans Portal Pack.

Check out Satya's blog entry introducing this feature, and especially the screencast that illustrates usage via a sample Shopping Cart application.  

Also note that the upcoming new versions of the Portal Standards, Portlet 2.0 (JSR286) and WSRP 2.0, will provide support for  portlet coordination through more than one mechanism including events. Support for those will also similarly make it's way into the Portal Pack.

Portal Pack 2.0 preview is now available for download here.

Although this version has not introduced any functional changes in the serverplugin modules, there are few changes with respect to the portlet builder (Generic Portlets) module. Unlike the earlier version, in this version of the Portal Pack, there is no separate "Portlet Application" project type. This version of Portal Pack supports Portlet applications through the web framework. Hence, "Portlet Support" can be added to a new/existing web application through the web framework. In other words, one can say that an existing/new web application can be extended to support Portlets inside it.

To learn how to create a portlet application using Portal Pack 2.0 preview click here. 

Here is a netbeans plugin developed for writing workflow portlets. This plugin not only demonstrates the ease of coding workflow portlets but also uses an extensible API for performing workflow.

Check out the Netbeans plugin for Developing Workflow Portlets

The OpenPortal Portlet Container provides a custom way to perform eventing between portlets. I have created a NetBeans plugin  demonstrated in the EventingDemo which depicts how easy it is to write portlets which generate and consume events.

The NetBeans plugin with the upcoming Netbeans 6 release, makes it easy to drag and drop the Java code for the portlet to generate/receive events. It also introduces appropriate XML entries in the custom xml file required by the Portlet Container.

The OpenPortal Project  will soon have a Content Management System (CMS)  infrastructure and an open CMS out of the box . This CMS, currently implemented as a Document Management System  is JSR170 (JCR standards) compliant and uses Apache's Jackrabbit and Object Content Mapping (OCM) .

  The interesting part is that Document Management  functionality is exposed via tag libraries where the tags can be dragged and dropped in the portlet page and developer can have his/her own  CMS presentation . For this we have the NetBeans plugin . Check this out in the CMSDemo . This CMS solution is in progress and we plan to enhance it further for Article Management, Jobs Management and Ad Management.

Check out two cool enhancements to the OpenPortal community landing page:

1. Roadmap – now that the complete production portal server source code is available to the community, we wanted to ensure the community also has visibility to features expected in future source and binary versions e.g. upcoming features like the new Visual Desktop Design Tool, Delegated Administration, etc. We will update the roadmap as new features are added or removed from a specific future release.

2. Centralized and Categorized Downloads – since the OpenPortal community site is intended to be the main landing page for all related subprojects, we centralized the navigation to all the downloads that are available on sun.com, java.net, netbeans.org, etc. Additionally, we have structured the page to make it easy to find relevant information for the download you are interested in.

We hope you like the changes.

  Sun announces the creation of the OpenPortal community which will focus on the development of standards-based enterprise-class portal technologies. You can access the OpenPortal community on java.net.

Sun recently contributed the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 source into the OpenPortal community.  The source code is a read-only, non-buildable version that you can download from the OpenPortal Downloads page.  A buildable version of the source code will be available later this month, the Roadmap page has more details.

The Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 includes features such as

• identity-based content delivery,
  
• community framework (including wiki and blog),
  
• plugins for portlet development in Eclipse and NetBeans,
  
• and much more. 
  

Moving forward, all Sun Java System Portal Server development, including buildable source and binaries, will be available in the OpenPortal community.

Just a quick reminder to everyone that the submission deadline for the Portlet Challenge Contest is fast approaching - it's EOD PST March 27th, 2007.

So get those entries in and have a chance to win among the several iPods up for grabs.

Good luck and may the best and most interesting Portlets win!

Wesley and Marina have done a complete refresh of the popular "Introducing Java Portlet Specifications.." article. It now not only covers the Java Portlet Specification 1.0 (JSR 168), but also takes a peek at the ongoing work on the upcoming Java Portlet Specification 2.0 (JSR 286).

In addition, it walks through a sample Weather Portlet tying together leverage of the Portlet Repository Project, the Portlet Container Project, and the NetBeans Portal Pack Project.

So check it out -- Introducing Java Portlet Specifications: JSR 168 and JSR 286

Developers start your IDE's! Take the Sun Portlet Challenge. Win an Apple 30 GB U2 Special Edition iPod or 1 GB iPod Shuffle. Ends March 27, 2007. » More

Here's some developer resources to help you get started:

• Open Source Portlet Container
• Portal Pack Plugin a Netbeans plugin to develop, deploy and test portlets for the Open Source Portlet Container

The Portal/Portlet marketplace continues to expand and gain momentum worldwide (* as estimated by Industry Pundits). The developer ecosystem is an instrumental part of that growth. To mirror that, and help fuel it further, the Sun Developer Network Hub for Portal Server has been redone from ground up to appeal to a wide audience of developers that are interested in all things related to the world of Portals and Portlets.

It now has information, resources and pointers right from the latest on the Sun Java System Portal Server product-line, the Enterprise-class Portal Open Source Project that is gaining momentum on java.net, to the latest advances in Portlet technologies/standards, to information about the next generation Portal/Portlets Tools (including those from NetBeans), and more..

So calling one, calling all,  check it out  -- http://developers.sun.com/portalserver

This Portlet Container open source project milestone 1 beta is now available as the part of Java Application Platform SDK Update 2 release. You can download the same from here.  Here are some of the links to the documentation.

• Portlet Container Release Notes
• Portlet Container Installation Instructions
• Portlet Container Screencasts
• Article: Understanding the Portlet Container 1.0 Beta Software and Deploying Portlets

The Netbeans Portlet Plugin is also available which works with NetBeans IDE 5.5 or above, current release of NetBeans Portlet Plugin helps developers to develop, deploy and test portlets on the Portlet Container 1.0,  You can download the same from here .  Here are some links to the plugins documentation

• NetBeans Portlet Plugin 1.0 Release Notes
  
• NetBeans Portlet Plugin 1.0 Installation Instructions
  
• Article on Developing Portlets using NetBeans Portlet Plugin
  
• Other Articles and User guides available on netbeans.org

For more details refer to Deepak's and Satya's blogs.