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The Developer Perspective
Michelle Osmond
Design – Requirements Gathering
• Sales & Research projects– Prototypes/Demos
• User group meetings
• Usability workshops & questionnaires– With close collaborators: resource-intensive process
– Focus on Java Client, not portal
• Support calls– Bugs
– Feature requests
Design - implementation• Service-oriented approach to implementation
– J2EE, EJBs / Java RMI / Web Services
ServerConfiguration
Deployment Execution
Task Archive
Data/WF Storage
Java Client
Servlets Portlets
Web services Command line Web Portal
• Main focus on Java client for workflow development, execution and deployment
Design – create workflows
• Provide framework for users to develop and deploy their own workflows to the portal
– Users manage their own design and evaluation of portal services
Design – deploy workflows
• Basic portal:
– Userspace (file) access
– List of services
– Dynamically generated page for each service
Design – web portal (servlets)
• Jetspeed (portlet-based) portal:
– Users additionally have control over the whole portal site layout
– Can integrate own custom tools as portlets
Design – web portal (portlets)
Technical Strategy• Technologies
– J2EE (JBoss) server, includes portal on embedded Tomcat (servlets, JSPs, Struts).
– Portlets: JSR-168, on Jetspeed 1.6
• Portal Functionality: subset of Java Client, for simpler use
– Userspace access (files and workflows)
– Execution of deployed workflows (services)
– Task management
Also:
– Server administration
Development Issues
• Time / Resources– Portal & its usability not a top priority
– Engine and Java Client have the focus
– Many developer skills needed:• Java RMI, Swing GUIs, Tomcat/J2EE, XML, HTML, CGI,
JavaScript, JSP, Servlets, Struts & Tiles, JSR-168, Applets, AJAX…
• Web design, accessibility, usability, compatibility
Development Issues
• Browser differences– Discourages development of rich interfaces using JavaScript
– Plugin support, e.g. SVG
• Technology limitations– Struts & portlets
• Portal QA– Difficult to do comprehensively
• Maintainability/testing of rich JavaScript interfaces
Evaluation
• Java client has the focus– Usability workshops, questionnaires
• Portal not formally evaluated– Bug reports, feature requests
– Users design and evaluate their own portal services
Lessons Learnt - Good• Deployed services are useful and popular
– Easy to parameterise and execute
– Easy to update and add functionality• Users have complete control over portal services: design, construct
workflow, deploy to web
• Flexible and powerful workflow system
• Portlets allow portals to be easily customised further– Skinning, layout
– New, custom or third-party tools
• Continually developing new features, driven by user requests
Lessons Learnt – Not so good• No formal UI design stage or manager
– Inconsistent look & feel
– UI convenient/intuitive for the developer, not the user
– Deployment tool UI in particular (working on this)
• Awareness of UI problems: existence, importance– “INVALID” bugs, “it’s documented in the manual”
• Interactivity, rich interfaces– More web renderers for parameter entry
– Result visualisation
– Service linking
Future Plans
• Better deployment tool GUI
• More custom, interactive web visualisers for data
• Service linking & interactivity– More web renderers, e.g. applets & JavaScript, for complex input
– Smoother use of multiple services
• Update technology: – newer versions of JBoss, Tomcat
– Look at newer portals: Jetspeed 2, JBoss Portal
end