Delivering Portal Content

The standard Desktop displays a web page that arranges portal content in rows and columns. Portal Server uses two methods to deliver content to the Desktop:

• Channels - A specialized content area that occupies a small window within the page. A channel consists of the following:

  • A provider object

  • Configuration files

  • Data files, such as XML files and HTML templates, that support the channel

    Examples of channels are the following:

    • News channel - Displays links to online news and information

    • Mail channel - Displays mail messages sent to end users and allows end users to view and manage mail messages

• Container channels - An aggregation of channels. Often container channels are simply called containers. Portal Server supports AJAXTableContainerProvider, which provides rich user interaction with features such as loading and updating channels asynchronously and drag-and-drop positioning of channels.

  Examples of containers are the following:

  • Table container - Arranges channels into rows and columns

  • Tab container - Arranges channels (typically table container channels) with a tab navigation bar across the top, so that the end user views them one at a time

Portal Server supports the following kinds of channels:

• Standard Java portlets, which use the Portlet 1.0 standard defined by JSR 168, which allows portlets to run in multiple portal environments.

• Providers, which use proprietary interfaces. For example:

  • JSP providers for compiling and executing JSP files

  • XML providers for translating XML files

• Remote portlets, which use the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) 1.0 standard, a web services protocol for integrating JSR 168 portlets from remote sources.