Saturday, 25 August 2007
Fun with WebSphere Portlet Factory
I've been tied up for most of the past month or so, building customer
demonstrations using WebSphere Portlet Factory.
demonstrations using WebSphere Portlet Factory.
At the beginning of the process, I knew enough to build a simple
drill-down dashboard portlet, taking data from an Excel spreadsheet.
After much experimentation, trial and error, I've now built a whole host
of different portlets using this most excellent tool - interaction with
DB2, online awareness using Lotus Sametime, Ajax type-ahead
functionality in queries, drag and drop eventing using DOJO etc. etc. etc.
The value of the tool continues to impress me, especially as I wouldn't
consider myself as a proper Java developer.
In fact, I'm so impressed, I'm actually going to attend a 4-day class in
Manchester in early October.
The sky is truly the limit.
:-)
# posted by Dave Hay : 08:59
Comments:
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Dave - how 'different' is Portlet Factory? Anecdotal evidence tells me that at first people find it confusing and difficult, but after a while can achieve fantastic productivity improvements. Is this your feeling too having spent some time with it?
Jon
Yes, I'd concur with your comments - WebSphere Portlet Factory (WPF) offers a completely different development paradigm, which is totally different to most environments.
For example, I've always used WSAD or RAD to create portlets, so (a) I need to understand the API ( do's and don'ts ) and (b) I need to write the code myself - the tooling helps, but dat code don't write itself.
Conversely, WPF works on a parametric basis - you provide the parameters, it generates the code.
Apparently, the whole factory concept came from the Computer Aided Design industry ( according to Programming Portlets: From JSR 168 to WebSphere Portal Extensions: -
http://www.davehay.f2s.com/2007/05/unashamed-plug-not-for-me-but-for.html
which kinda makes sense if you've ever used any CAD tool.
In short, one person's meat is another person's poison ( to coin a phrase ) but WPF will definitely feature in my future development plans, especially when I want to RAPIDLY create a vision using WebSphere Portal etc.
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Yes, I'd concur with your comments - WebSphere Portlet Factory (WPF) offers a completely different development paradigm, which is totally different to most environments.
For example, I've always used WSAD or RAD to create portlets, so (a) I need to understand the API ( do's and don'ts ) and (b) I need to write the code myself - the tooling helps, but dat code don't write itself.
Conversely, WPF works on a parametric basis - you provide the parameters, it generates the code.
Apparently, the whole factory concept came from the Computer Aided Design industry ( according to Programming Portlets: From JSR 168 to WebSphere Portal Extensions: -
http://www.davehay.f2s.com/2007/05/unashamed-plug-not-for-me-but-for.html
which kinda makes sense if you've ever used any CAD tool.
In short, one person's meat is another person's poison ( to coin a phrase ) but WPF will definitely feature in my future development plans, especially when I want to RAPIDLY create a vision using WebSphere Portal etc.
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