Customer Reviews

IBM WebSphere Portal Primer (Websphere Software)

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This book covers the 4.x versions of WebSphere Portal.

I bought this book after spending many a sleepless night reading Redbooks for WebSphere Portal, hoping to find something that stuck to the basics, instead of trying to teach me every single feature or function of the product. This book excels in that regard.

The authors take a very practical approach to the product, first introducing it at a high level, then describing the process of installing the software on various platforms (Windows, Solaris, Linux, etc.), and moving on to a brief introduction to the portal interface and organization. Just as you find yourself beginning to question what portlets are all about, there is a chapter devoted exclusively to the portlet architecture and the portlet API which, while obviously targeted at developers, covers just enough information to paint a clear mental picture of all the "moving parts" that make up a portlet.

The latter chapters are devoted to user personalization, security and single sign on, site analytics, the WebSphere Content Publisher, search functionality, portlets that are bundled with the WPS product, and a brief discussion of federated portals (multiple portal instances that share portal content with each other).

As is the case throughout, the authors start every chapter at a high level and carefully expose you to the details so that you aren't overwhelmed. This was my experience with virtually all of the Redbooks published-- even their introductory material seems more like a reference than a guide. It's obvious that these guys made a conscious effort to present the material in a way that is easy to digest, and I believe they have succeeded. I'm already eagering anticipating the second edition, which I hope will help me get up to speed with all the new features of WPS 5.0.

Target Audience
Portal developers and administrators who are responsible for the installation and maintenance of WebSphere portal server.

Contents
This is a tutorial guide on how to install and configure WebSphere Portal, as well as how portlets are developed.

The book is divided into the following chapters:

Enter The Portal; A Portal Blueprint; Putting Up The Doorway; Customizing The Portal; Building Blocks; Personalizing The Portal; Portal Gatekeeper; Portal And Beyond; Portal Crossing; Installation Planning Worksheet; Jlog Properties File; Portal Related Web Sites

Review
IBM is pushing the concept of the portal very hard, and their portal branding falls under the WebSphere umbrella. But unlike installing Notes/Domino or Microsoft Office, trying to get WebSphere Portal (WP) up and running is not a trivial task. Things have to be done in a certain order with certain settings. And then once that is done, you have to start configuring the portal environment with the portlets you want to use. This book can help guide you through that whole process.

First, the good things... There's a good blend between background material on the J2EE technology involved and the "hands-on" tasks, such as installation and configuration. The screen shots and step-by-step writing is very well done, and you should be able to get up to speed quickly. I wish I had access to this book when I first started exploring WP a year or so ago. It would have saved me a lot of time and aimless wandering.

Now the not-so-good thing... Since IBM is banking on WP being the next significant business platform, they are enhancing and simplifying the software on an aggressive schedule. As a result, the current version of WP has gone beyond the version used for this tutorial. Normally that wouldn't be deadly to a book like this, but in this case it may be. The install process has been improved, as well as the administration process. If the user is trying to follow along using the WP 5.x software, there won't be a lot of matches. That could prove frustrating to the beginning WP administrator.

Even with the version issue, I'd still recommend this as a good secondary book to add to your portal bookshelf. There are still many basic principles that apply to version 5, such as the portlet development concepts, theming, and some of the out-of-the box portlets you can download and use for free.

Conclusion
The main drawback to this book is that WebSphere Portal is now up to version 5.x, and the book covers version 4.1. Since WP 5 is significantly improved over 4.x, you may not get as much out of this book as you'd like. But the basic information and explanations are solid and informative.

I found this book to be a helpful reference. For example, the explanations of some of the portlets helped me understand how to use them better than any other information I searched for.

I regret that I've bought it. The version 5.0 of WebSphere Portal has been in use for almost a year and these guys release second edition of this book on version 4.0 of WebSphere Portal. Useless!

The current version is already WebSphere Portal 5.02 and it includes many fundamental changes... so you better wait until a fresh edition is out.