Atul and Marina just published the first part of an Overview of the Portal Project at Java.Net. The portal project is building a complete enterprise-quality portal. It is doing so in steps, releasing components as they are rearchitected for the needs of an Open Source world where modules are intended to be reused and recombined. The existing components in the Portal project include: a Portlet Container, a WSRP Producer and Consumer, a JSF Portlet Bridge, and a Portlet Repository (and also see the PRP Protocol).

Coopetition is alive and well in Open Source. Take for instance JBoss. JBoss is clearly Sun's competidor in the AppServer area but they use JAXB and JSF. Similar case with Portal: JBoss, Sun and Portlet Swap are working in the PRP Project to enlarge the market of portable portlets. See the PRP home page, the Invitation, and JBoss' blog

OpenSource projects have a high degree of interconnectivity and plugability, and, bit by bit we are acheiving that across our different Middleware projects. The Portal project already includes a Portlet Container and Karthikk explains how to Deploy the Portal Container on GlassFish and then how to Deploy Portlets on that portal. Another recent combination is Phobos and the Web Server, while OpenSSO and GlassFish is almost working and I'll report when it gets fixed.

More OpenSource code. Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) defines the Web Services required so that a local portal can show the content of a Portlet that lives remotedly. This is a useful and relatively uncomplicated integration mechanism, and relies on two pieces, a consumer and a provider - check Ajit's overview of the spec (part I, part II). When the Portal project was launched, it included the Producer Code; now the Consumer Code is also available at the WSRP project. The rest of the portal will follow bit by bit.

BTW, check these related blogs on WSRP: Proxy Settings for WSRP and WSRP and User Identity Propagation.

A new article is available on Sun Developer Network detailing how to switch between Java DB and other database implementations. The article is part of the ongoing series on portal community and collaboration features. The article is available here.

A new article was added to Sun Developer Network on AJAX portlet best practices. The article refers to an updated version of the sample, AJAX Portlet Invoice Viewer, and is available here.