Custom-Built Java vs. Open-Source Portal (like Liferay) – What Should I Do?

Posted on Feb 21, 2011 in Business Strategy, Industry Trends, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments

You are not alone. Many organizations are going through the same analysis and process. There are many possible options/variables to consider, but “should I roll-my-own custom site vs. leverage [open-source] products?” is one of the most common questions to answer today when considering a new web project. Following is a quick list of reasons you might want to consider choosing one over the other.

Custom-Built Solution

• Complete Flexibility: Build a relevant solution without any, or many, compromises — whatever compromises you do make will likely be based on time and money as opposed to wrestling the wisdom of someone else’s architectural choices
• Smaller Footprint: Along the same lines, only write code and maintain what is vital to your specific needs

Liferay

• Why build that?: Liferay handles aspects of the implementation that you simply do not want to have to build and maintain on your own unless you have a compelling reason to do so
  • authentication options – pre-built integration with LDAP and other technologies like CAS
  • security – roles-based permissions model
  • technology architecture (db abstraction, UI design, templating, page structure, etc.) – Liferay has already thought through flexible approach
• Learning curve: though there is a learning curve to Liferay (or any other product), it you can actually find external resources who understand Liferay, but anyone outside the organization will need time to pick up on all the nuances of your custom code/architecture
• Still Custom: We have built enterprise web applications in portal environment where one would have to dig a bit to determine a portal framework was used. You can still build custom features and drop in standards-based portlets where you need in a solution like Liferay’s. Also, remember, you have access to the source code, unlike other products on the market.

Liferay Intranet Portal with Google Charts Dashboard

Posted on Jan 17, 2011 in Business Strategy, Case Studies, Industry Trends, News and Updates, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, and finally got around to adding Google Charts into an enterprise intranet portal. We had five unique data points to display as key performance indicators (KPIs) for how the organization is performing.

We have delivered a number of whizbang charting and dashboard capabilities and had a lot of fun with them over the years, but this time, we wanted a lightweight capability that generated images (no Flash and no JavaScript) so any old browser on any platform would render this area properly. We also didn’t want to introduce any extra file downloads associated to the various charting libraries we have used in the past.

We decided to use a Google-O-Meter (the gauge at top of the image) and Bar Charts (the lower four bars). There were a number of tricks we employed to get these looking the way we needed (transparent background, proportionally accurate grid lines in the bar charts, a think arrow in the Google-O-Meter, etc.), but the most satisfying aspect was the simple ability to integrate this with custom Liferay Web Content Structures and Web Content Templates.

We are pleased and impressed with how easily and nicely these technologies came together. Give it a shot sometime and if there is a lot of interest, we might get some time to post a detailed white paper on how to go about this.

Liferay – Transparency Equals Comfort

Posted on Jan 2, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments

The open source movement has been amazing in the enterprise. We have been working with Liferay for a while now, and find it to be getting better each day. The nice thing is, we can literally see it get better each day with direct access to the source over the web along with detailed commits and much more than ever anticipated we would ever know about our enterprise solutions. I believe that this is an example of transparency that makes the open source environment even more compelling.

Not only are these capabilities helping move along the open source environment and introduce pressure for further transparency by close-source vendors, they also begin to outline possible options and framework for enterprises or even smaller organizations undertaking internal development with mature development methodologies.

Liferay IDE Installation and Development on Windows

Posted on Dec 26, 2010 in News and Updates, Technical Tips | 2 comments

My experience is that Liferay 6.x is excellent. It is even better with the addition of Liferay IDE.

This guide walks through the following topics related to setting up your local Windows environment for Liferay development using Liferay IDE:

• Installing Liferay IDE
• Liferay Plugins SDK Installation and Configuration in Liferay IDE
• Liferay Portal Configuration in Liferay IDE
• Developing and Deploying HelloWorld Portlet in Liferay IDE

Software and versions used for the screenshots in this tutorial are:

• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
• Eclipse Helios 3.6.x
• Liferay IDE 1.1.x
• Liferay Portal 6.0.5
• Tomcat 6.0.26
• Liferay Plugins SDK 6.0.2