Java Abs U Portal Education Grid

uPORTAL - EDUCATION GRID
PORTAL OF PORTAL FOR UNIVERSITY & EDU GRID SERVICES

Education Grid
The Education Grid Project is a path-breaking initiative of the Government of to provide
quality education to all the students pursuing higher studies in the state. The project
vision is to provide quality education to all, independent of geography.
The project aims to facilitate multiple independent course-specific collaborative
information and knowledge networks across distributed servers over the Internet as well
as affordable and pedagogically effective online assisted learning environment for the
colleges in any subject.

Introduction to uPortal
uPortal is a framework for producing a campus portal. It is a free, sharable portal under
development by institutions of higher-education. We see an institutional portal as an
abridged and customized version of the institutional Web presence, a "pocket-sized"
version of the campus Web.
Portal technology adds "customization" and "community" to the campus Web presence.
Customization allows each user to define a unique and personal view of the campus Web.
Community tools, such as chat, forums, survey, and so on, build relationships among
campus constituencies.
The primary differentiator is that uPortal is focused on the requirements of higher
education institutions, whereas other products are mostly focused on the requirements of
large corporations, even if the product is marketed to higher education institutions.

Goal
There are many portal offerings. Most of them are vendor offerings. In those cases the
back-end systems that integrate with the portal are from either the same vendor or a
vendor that has partnered with another vendor.
This causes problems when the portal in question is required to integrate with the
software provided by either another vendor or the institution. An example of this might be
integration with library services.
Since it is unlikely that any one vendor can provide all of the services needed by a given
campus, it becomes difficult for the campus to provide a consistent, standard way of
integrating components. The goal of this project is to provide a software container that
solves the software/content integration problem through uPortal.

OBJECTIVE
uPortal is a platform for presenting aggregated content to a variety of sources that is
customizable by both the user and the administrators. It is built using a database to
contain the information about each user, with XSL transformations and JAVA to take this
abstract data and convert it into the final, structured layout.

One of the great advantages to the uPortal design is the fact that the layout data, the
structure and the look of the final layout are all independent of each other.
Therefore, the information that is taken out of the database can be transformed by
different XSL documents, rendering the same layout data into a wide variety of final views.
The objective of the project is to customize and deploy uPortal for Education Grid.

DEVELOPMENT / PROGRAM ENVIRONMENT
Configuration used for Development
Processor : Intel Pentium 4
Memory : 256 MB SDRAM
Hard disk : 40 GB or above
Monitor : 17 inch VGA
Keyboard : 108 Key
Pointing device : Asus Mouse
Modem : 256 Kbps

SOFTWARE SPECIFICATION
Operating System : Any Operating System with Java support
RDBMS : SQL SERVER, ORACLE
Data Store : XML
Web server : Apache server with tomcat plug-in
Application Server : Tomcat 4.x
Text editor : Jcreator would be used for coding and debugging
Web Browser : Latest version of Internet Explorer
Build Tool : ANT
Language : Java

JDK: uPortal requires the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1.8 or higher. You can obtain
the JDK by going to the download section at http://java.sun.com/
ANT: Ant the build tool, version 1.4 or later, which may be downloaded from
http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/
A Java Servlet Engine/Container. This must be compatible with the Servlet 2.2 and
JSP 1.1 API. uPortal is developed under Tomcat making it a good platform to adopt (
the build files for uPortal have been set up such that it can be easily deployed into
Tomcat).
A JDBC compliant database. The following databases should work with some
modification to the CREATE scripts and a number of SQL statements: HypersonicSQL,
MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, PosgreSQL, DB2, Sybase SQL Server and Ingres
SQL SERVER / ORACLE is used as the database for this customization.

SYSTEM STUDY AND ANALYSIS
EXISTING SYSTEM
At present there is no such framework available for the portal, Education Grid.

PROPOSED SYSTEM
In an educational context, we are facing many challenges. How do we keep the
administration, faculty, staff, and students well informed about institutional policies and
procedures?
How do we ensure the student body receives accurate and up-to-date information that help
them to achieve their educational and career goals?
In addition, we hope to build learning communities - communities of students, instructors,
administration, faculty, and staff all collaborating and constructing strong relationships that
provide the foundation for students to achieve their goals with greater success.
We also want to promote information sharing so users can build on their experiences at the
institution. Plus, we want to provide seamless integration with legacy and other
applications.
One solution to these goals is to provide a support tool for such learning through a Web
portal. This portal should provide all users with valuable information about their personal
details and interests, and about the institution. However, building a portal is no small task,
especially when you consider the shrinking budgets and limited resources in today's
economy.
A good solution might be one of the available out-of-the-box portals. However, if
customization, direction, and cost are a concern, you might want to look at uPortal by Java
in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG). uPortal is a free open source portal
project built on Java, XML, and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language).
This supports Web services channels, permissions and group managers etc. uPortal gives
you the flexibility to open your favorite Java editor and implement any new features you or
your institution might need. The portal is specifically focused at higher-education
institutions, although some businesses and high schools use it as a framework for building
collaborative communities.
The framework has pluggable components known as channels that deliver focused
information to the user. Users can select what channels they want to view based on their
roles in the institution and customize the site's look and feel to their preferences.
uPortal provides a framework for integrated delivery of content gathered from an
assortment of information sources. This framework provides efficient and flexible engine for
assembling a presentation.
Given a set of information sources (channels), and a recipe on how to arrange and frame
them (stylesheets), uPortal framework coordinates the compilation of the final document.
The various channels available in uPortal are: -
Image – A container for rendering media, not just graphic images. It supports any
type of media that can be displayed or played through the browser including
graphics, flash objects, movies and audio. Exactly which formats can be supported,
i.e. PNG vs. GIF or MOV vs. WAV is dependent on the end user's browser.
Inline Frame – Similar to the Image Channel, the Inline Frame is a container for
displaying HTML content. The content in an Inline Frame channel does not go
through the uPortal framework, so it does NOT have to be well formed XHTML.

RSS – Renders an RSS document of type 0.90, 0.9x or 1.0. No support is provided
for RSS 1.0 modules.
Web Proxy – Similar to the Inline Frame Channel Type in that it is a contain from
HTML content. However, it requires well-formed XHTML and can also render an
XML application.
XML Transformation – Renders an XML fragment, which is validated by an XSLT
stylesheet.
Custom – Customized channel content with all required resources provided by the
writer of the channel.

PROBLEM DEFINITION
uPortal is a platform for presenting aggregated content to a variety of sources that is
customizable by both the user and the administrators. It is built using a database to contain
the information about each user, with XSL transformations and JAVA to take this abstract
data and convert it into the final, structured layout.
One of the great advantages of the uPortal design is the fact that the layout data, the
structure and the look of the final layout are all independent of each other. Here what we
have to do is to configure and implement the uPortal for Education Grid. First we have to
identify the channels that are needed for the portal and add those channels to the uPortal.
The different user groups include developer, administrator, faculty, staff, students etc. Each
user has their own login page and they have the right to customize their page according to
their wish.

FEATURES OF PROPOSED SYSTEM
Componentization of framework
uPortal will follow a component-based implementation strategy. Component
configuration files will provide a transparent view of the overall architecture, facilitating
further enhancements of the framework and long-term maintenance of the codebase.
Platform
Open-source code allows more options for customization and integration.
Work with many databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server
• Flexible options of web servers, Windows, Linux, Unix.
Usability
uPortal does not include web-based page design functionality.
Third-party software integration
Supports integration of third party software through Java development.
Administration
Easy-to-use administration features such as group manager, channel manager, data
loader.
Security
Has built-in user / group manager integrates with LDAP.
Scalability
Specifics of uPortal scalability depend on the exact choice of application server and
database. Tools will include a database conversion tool and stylesheet conversion tool
that will enable migration from an implementation.

SYSTEM DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
uPortal is an application that aggregates content and services in a set of dynamic and
individualized web pages that deliver a unique experience to each user. Content and
services are represented within the portal as channels.
A channel is much like a small web page. It represents a specific task, service, or collection
of information. Channel design and implementation is a bit different than web page design,
but easy to master.
Portals aggregate these channels intelligently, by leveraging what they know about the user
(personalization), including affiliation (e.g. faculty, staff, student) and by combining that
information with choices the user may have made to indicate what content and services
they want to see (customization).
The portal offers content providers with a mechanism to provide key services and
information to specific audiences. The portal also provides services such as single sign-on,
which can be used with applications that require PID/password authentication.

Channel Design Concepts
uPortal combine content and services from many sources. Each distinct piece of content is
called a channel. From a user's perspective, a channel provides information or offers a way
to perform a task, or both.
However, from the perspective of a content provider there are four distinct types of
channels.
Information Channel: a non-interactive type of channel that typically contains
information such as announcements, lists of links, or an article or some other text.
Data Channel: a non-interactive type of channel that contains dynamically generated
data tailored to the individual user, some personal information contained within a
database etc.
Web Channel: an interactive or non-interactive channel that might contain an image
or the contents of an existing web page.
Application Channel: an interactive channel that allow user to perform tasks such as
searching or updating information.

Presentation assembly
uPortal is a framework for an integrated delivery of content gathered from an assortment of
information sources. A framework is a reusable design, expressed as a set of classes that
can serve as a solution to a family of related problems and support reuse at a larger
granularity than classes.
A mature framework allows components to be reused as "black boxes", that is, a
programmer can incorporate them into a system under construction without knowing their
implementations.
The primary function of the framework is to provide efficient and flexible engine for
assembling a presentation. Given a set of information sources (channels), and a recipe on
how to arrange and frame them (stylesheets), uPortal framework coordinates the
compilation of the final document.
The starting point for any presentation assembly is always an abstract organization of
channels: the user layout document. The assembly process transforms the userLayout
document in three major stages to obtain the final document in a desired markup language.

The first stage translates an abstract user Layout hierarchy into the structural terms of the
final presentation. That translation is termed structure transformation, and its logic is
defined by the structure stylesheet.
For example, the structure stylesheet for the default “tab and column” presentation will
translate abstract user layout structure into a structure of “tab” and “column” elements.
After the structure transformation, uPortal initiates rendering cycles of the channels that will
be incorporated into the final presentation.
The second stage of the assembly process will translate the result of the structure
transformation into a target markup language. This translation is termed theme
transformation, and its logic is defined by the theme stylesheet.
For example, default nested-tables theme transforms a document produced by the tab-
column structure transformation (a structure of tabs, columns, etc.) into a set of nested
HTML tables that visually resemble tabs and columns.
The content provided by each individual channel will be incorporated into the result of the
structure transformation.
The final stage serializes the result of the theme transformation together with the channel
content into a stream of characters according to the rules of the target markup language
and media.

uPortal has a dozen successful implementations and many more institutions, vendors and
agencies engaged in new implementations. New technologies, specifically XML and XSLT,
are making portals more flexible and able to support more devices.
uPortal is a leader in this segment of the portal market. Vendors, seeing the uPortal effort
as both standards-setting and a commodity, have adopted uPortal saving both time and
development cost.
Others are supporting uPortal by “channelizing” their products using uPortal channel
interfaces. The functional requirements of academic portals have expanded sharply during
the year as experience identified benefits from new capabilities.
The uPortal technology provides a concrete way of managing the content and constituents
of the electronic campus. It allows users to personalize content according to their roles and
preferences.

uPortal will enable the institute to:
Attract students
Maintain alumni network
Attract research partners
Offer distant, flexible learning
Engage, connect and build community
Improve administration efficiency
Offer personalized, customized and targeted service
Improve service to students and staff
Integrate and streamline information & services
Enhance university image and raise profile

Java Abs U Portal Education Grid

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