Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 Installation Guide

Chapter 1 Overview

This guide provides instructions for installing and updating Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 software, the next-generation Web 2.0 application aggregation and presentation platform from Sun Microsystems, Inc.. This guide also includes a basic “quick tour” through the Web Space Server interface and instructions for quickly getting up and running with the product.

This chapter includes the following topics:

How to Use This Guide

This guide is divided into two major sections:

The best way to use this guide depends on whether someone has already installed Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 software for you to explore or whether you want to install Web Space Server yourself.

If Web Space Server has already been installed by someone else — Skip the installation chapter and jump ahead to Chapter 3, Using Sun GlassFish Web Space Server Software to start using Web Space Server right away. Most users fall into this category. Web Space Server is browser-based, so if someone has given you the address to use for a Web Space Server installation, you can just point your browser to it and you do not need to install anything on your system.
If you want to install or upgrade Web Space Server yourself — If you are a system administrator, application developer, or general user who wants to install Web Space Server for yourself or your organization, start with Chapter 2, Installation and Configuration.

Whichever kind of user you are, it is recommended that you read the remainder of this chapter to get a sense of what Web Space Server is and what it can do for your organization. You may also find it useful to refer to Chapter 4, Frequently Asked Questions for answers to common questions about Web Space Server software.

What is Sun GlassFish Web Space Server?

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 software is Sun's next-generation Web 2.0 application aggregation and presentation platform. It is a suite of integrated software products that enables businesses large and small to pull together applications and content from a variety of Web-based and internal sources and present them as a unified, customizable portal on Web browsers, kiosks, and mobile devices. Web Space Server makes it easier for users to find and use the tools and information they need when they need them.

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server is a collaborative effort between Sun Microsystem's Portal Server team, the Liferay Community, and the OpenPortal community. Web Space Server integrates technologies from these three products to enable enterprise-class portals that are easy to use for end users, system administrators, and developers alike.

Web Space Server enables:

Social Networking for the Enterprise

Find people with the answers across organizations, silos, and hierarchies, and boost productivity in distributed teams.
Enterprise Widgets for Collaboration Work

Bundled Productivity Widget Suites to get work done (CMS, Workflow), and Information Widget Suite for Effective Collaboration (blogs, wikis).
Internet Widgets on the Enterprise Extranet

Build stickiness into your intranet with Google Gadgets, YouTube, and Facebook widgets.

Who Uses Sun GlassFish Web Space Server?

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 software offers features for general users, system administrators, and application and portal developers.

For General Users, Web Space Server makes it easy to communicate, collaborate, and customize the applications shared by your organization. Social networking components, like blogs, wikis, bookmarks, and messaging can be presented side-by-side with proprietary and third-party business and productivity applications. Different user communities can have their own portals, layouts, and customizations, and Web Space Server can be scaled down or up to suit organizations from the very small up to the enterprise level.
For System Administrators, Web Space Server makes it easy to manage users, groups, communities, permissions, and highly specific levels of security. A browser-based GUI makes managing portals, portlets, plugins, and applications as simple as dragging and dropping. Web Space Server runs on top of the enterprise-class, open source GlassFish Enterprise Server, which means that Web Space Server can be optimized according to your needs for performance, reliability, security, load balancing, and clustering, among other server characteristics.
For Application and Portal Developers, Web Space Server makes it easy to develop portlets, portals, plugins, services, content management, workflows, and themes using your own tools, including NetBeans^TM, Eclipse, and Dreamweaver. Web Space Server is based on the open source OpenPortal and Liferay 5.2 code bases, which means what you develop in Web Space Server will be standards-based, portable, and maintainable. You can combine familiar Ajax, Jmaki, Ruby, PHP, and Java technologies and techniques with Web Space Server's powerful presentation capabilities to deliver the kind of rich, dynamic, interactive user experience previously available only in complex custom-built Web applications.

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server Features

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 software provides a new class of portal functionality by which users can define their own Web spaces. With built-in content and document management, human workflow development tools, enterprise identity integration, and social networking features, system administrators and application developers can now deploy a platform that allows for rapid rollout of next generation Web capabilities for their users.

Key Web Space Server features include:

Identity-based content delivery
User-managed Web spaces, including user self-Web publishing and user access controls
Rapid and simple Web site design tools make it possible to quickly set up Web sites for content, collaboration, and interactivity, with out of the box templates
Built-in collaboration, with bundled wiki, blog, task management, calendaring, document sharing, polls, IM, and email applications
Document and Web content management system with workflow, staging, and publication tools
Localized in 22 languages; Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh_CN) localizations are directly supported by Sun Microsystems; localizations in other languages are community driven
Fully internationalized, which makes it possible to add new languages
User interface designed to support federal and international accessibility standards
Syndicate portlets and widgets with REST
Develop widgets using the JSR 286 portlet standard as well as scripting standards such as Ruby, PHP, and JMaki.

Additional Sun GlassFish Web Space Server Documentation

The Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 software documentation set is available on the Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 Document Collection page.

Additional documentation is also available on the Liferay wiki and OpenPortal documentation sites.