Deciding Which Tool to Use

2 Portlet Technologies Matrix 2-1 2 Portlet Technologies Matrix This chapter describes portlet features, characteristics, technologies, and tools to help you decide which portlet building technology best suits your needs. It includes the following sections: ■ Section 2.1, The Portlet Technologies Matrix ■ Section 2.2, General Suitability ■ Section 2.3, Expertise Required ■ Section 2.4, Deployment Type ■ Section 2.5, Caching Style ■ Section 2.6, Development Tool ■ Section 2.7, Portlet Creation Style ■ Section 2.8, User Interface Flexibility ■ Section 2.9, Ability to Capture Content from Web Sites ■ Section 2.10, Ability to Render Content Inline ■ Section 2.11, Charting Capability ■ Section 2.12, Public Portlet Parameters Support ■ Section 2.13, Private Portlet Parameter Support ■ Section 2.14, Event Support ■ Section 2.15, Ability to Hide and Show Portlets Based on User Privileges ■ Section 2.16, Multilingual Support ■ Section 2.17, Pagination Support ■ Section 2.18, Single Sign-On and External Application Integration

2.1 The Portlet Technologies Matrix

Table 2–1, Portlet Building Technologies Comparison Matrix summarizes the technologies and tools you can use with Oracle Portal on one axis, and the features and characteristics on the other. The matrix describes the tools and technologies that are covered in more detail in this guide: OmniPortlet, Web Clipping, the Java Portlets PDK-Java including Standards, Portlet Builder as an appendix, and PLSQL Portlets PDK-PLSQL in the matrix only. 2-2 Oracle Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for Oracle Portal The other sections in this chapter provide further detail on the characteristics listed in Table 2–1 . Use the table to quickly scan all the features and characteristics, then see the subsequent sections for more in-depth information. Note: While these are the primary tools for building portlets, additional tools and technologies exist, such as other Oracle products, including Oracle Reports and Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer. These other tools are not covered in this guide. Table 2–1 Portlet Building Technologies Comparison Matrix Web Clipping OmniPortlet PDK-Java Standards Portlet Builder PDK-PLSQL General Suitability A simple wizard-based tool that helps you retrieve and present Web content, originating from other Web sites, in your portal. Wizard-based tool, accessible from the browser. Capable of retrieving and presenting data from a wide variety of data sources. APIs for portlets built specifically for Oracle Portal. Portlets that should work with portals of other vendors. Oracle supports both WSRP and JSR-168. Wizard-based tool, accessible from the browser. Best suited for simple, DB-centric applications or portlets. APIs for portlets built specifically for Oracle Portal. Expertise Required No expertise required. Basic understanding of one or more supported data sources and the concepts of portlet and page parameters and events. Java, Servlet, JSP knowledge. Java, Servlet, JSP knowledge. Basic understanding of relational DB concepts. Optionally SQL, PLSQL. SQL, PLSQL, PLSQL Web Toolkit. Supported Data Sources for details, see Section 2.3, Expertise Required Any Web site accessible on the network over HTTP or HTTPS. CSV, XML, Web Service, SAP, SQL, Web site, JCA. No limitations. No limitations. SQL local DB or remote DB through DB link SQL local DB or remote DB through DB link Deployment Type Web provider Web provider Web provider WSRP Database provider Database provider Caching Style Expiry-based caching, invalidation-based caching auto invalidate when personalized. Expiry-based caching, invalidation-based caching auto invalidate when personalized. Expiry-based, validation, and invalidation caching, ESI. Validation and expiry-based caching. Expiry-based caching. Expiry-based, validation, and invalidation caching. Development Tool Browser - wizard. Browser - wizard. Oracle JDeveloper - Java Portlet Wizard or any other Java development environment - without the Wizard. Oracle JDeveloper - Java Portlet Wizard or any other Java development environment - without the Wizard. Browser - optionally PLSQL development environment. PLSQL development environment. Portlet Creation Style