Java Portal Solution - Liferay

去年同事介紹的一套 Open Source Java Portal，但一直沒有時間研究，今天突然想到未來需要整合應用系統的"殼"，因此找了一下相關 Solution。

Liferay Portal 是一套相當成熟的Java/J2EE portal system，遵循 Portlet API JSR168 的標準，提供個人化的介面, web email, blogs (like Xanga), 文件資料庫, CMS, 討論區, shopping (e-commerce), Wiki 以及許多其他內建現成可用的網上應用程式。Liferay 用了許多 Open Source 的技術，包括 Ant， Hibernate， Lucene，Spring， Struts，Velocity 等，值得ㄧ提的是 Liferay Portal 不但支援 Open Source 的 Application Server 還支援 BEA、IBM 等大廠的 Application Server

目前支援版本到 5.2

相關網站
官方網站 (點我)
大陸中文化網站 (點我)
2008 Gartner 市場產品分析 (點我)



看到 Liferay 的位置嗎? 針對 Liferay 的強項與限制, Gartner 的報告如下

Strengths

• Liferay is rapidly gaining market traction and visibility out of proportion to the company's small size.
• An open-source licensing model and the May 2008 agreement with Sun reduce perceptions of risk associated with a small vendor.
• The Sun-Liferay agreement gives Liferay access to Sun's JSR 286 portlet container and WSRPv2 implementation.
• Liferay Portal 5.1 includes some built-in content management, collaboration and social-networking features; an interface to Facebook; support for portlets built in Ruby and Python; and support for Google Gadgets.

Cautions

• Liferay is a small company, with limited experience in the enterprise sector and a limited (albeit growing) track record with Global 2000 scope deployments.
• Liferay offers few prebuilt portlets to connect to commonly used content management systems, content repositories, collaboration tools and business applications.
• Liferay lacks an extensive implementation partner network.
• As a commercial open-source company, Liferay faces challenges in monetizing enterprise use of Liferay Portal code, so its resources could remain constrained even if adoption of Liferay Portal continues to accelerate.

至於目前公司在用的 MOSS 2007 (新版應該也快要上市了吧)

Strengths

• MOSS 2007 is experiencing significant adoption by enterprises with fewer than 15,000 employees as an enterprisewide B2E portal, as well as some penetration in larger organizations for that use case, for content-centric partner extranets and customer-facing Web presences. MOSS 2007 has clearly expanded beyond departmental-level deployments and is being used as an enterprisewide B2E portal in many enterprises.
• The SharePoint Online Standard offering represents the first attempt by a leading horizontal portal product vendor to provide a SaaS horizontal portal. SharePoint Online is still inadequate for many horizontal-portal scenarios, but shows promise for departmental-level portal requirements.
• Use of MOSS 2007 for team-based collaboration and document management is driving MOSS use for other initiatives, including portals.
• Microsoft is successfully fostering initial MOSS 2007 deployments through Enterprise Licensing agreements, although enterprises should be aware that these agreements rarely cover all the MOSS 2007 client access licenses an organization would need for all employees.

Cautions

• MOSS 2007 does not offer full support for enterprise mashups or social networking. Microsoft's mashup-related efforts are split between its consumer Web-targeted Popfly initiative and promoting MOSS 2007 as a platform for WebPart-based composite applications. MySites are useful, but MOSS 2007 doesn't represent a full enterprise social-networking platform.
• Larger enterprises that have completed or are in advanced stages of their deployments report several issues, including a lack of content-replication features among independently configured MOSS installations; the need for network acceleration software for remote locations, if centralized server farm approaches are implemented; and challenges in fostering cultural adoption of MySites on an enterprisewide basis.
• MOSS is not yet being widely deployed for high-volume, transactional portals. Although some organizations pursue custom WebPart creation for applications access, the relative lack of Business Data Catalogue use in B2E portals indicates MOSS isn't being used widely to access applications.
• Widespread interest and adoption of MOSS means locating resources for new projects will be time-consuming and costly, and MOSS users indicate Microsoft, although actively working to address the issue, doesn't have adequate support structures and skills in place for larger, more-complex MOSS deployments.

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