Portal Server Software Desktop

The Desktop provides a mechanism for extending and aggregating content through the Provider Application Programming Interface (PAPI). The PAPI is a Java^TM API that enables you to construct the basic building blocks for creating channels. Usually, though not always, channels contain content. You can also have channels of channels; that is, a container channel that aggregates other channels. A channel can also be the entire Desktop page. The container channels define the layout of the Desktop.

See Sample Desktop and Desktop Hierarchy for a simple representation of a portal Desktop and its providers and containers. In this figure, the Desktop front page is a tab container with two tabs. Each tab contains a table container with various channels.

Notice how one provider, in this case, URLScraperProvider, is serving more than one channel. Providers can have a one-to-many relationship with channels.

Figure 1–1 Desktop Hierarchy and Building Block Providers