JBoss releases much awaited Portal 2.6 version. The new release bring in significant improvements in personalization, security, workflow, usability aspects along with integration with Google Gadgets. The new features of JBoss 2.6 portal includes (from Red Hat’s JBoss Releases Portal 2.6):
- “Usability Improvements: These include portal and user administration as well as content management. Portlets may be managed overall or for individual instances including default definition. User administration simplifies user creation, provides a list-based view, and includes user search. Basic content management provided out-of-the-box now includes action-based management within a familiar directory view.
- Advanced Personalization: Now users can personalize individual portlets, including themes, layouts, and portlet content, to increase the productivity of specific roles and people within a business process or collaboration effort. Further enhancements include user created user interfaces, drag-and-drop portlets, personalized dashboards and more granular controlled access at the portlet level.
- Content Management System (CMS) Workflow: JBoss jBPM provides content management approval workflow in a configurable process that enables or disables this role-based approval capability.
- Additional Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Support: WSRP support offers expanded functionality beyond the basic producer and consumer profiles. Version 2.6 adds implicit cloning capability to both the producer and consumer and supports advanced WSRP profiles.
- Identity: With JBoss 2.6, developers have pre-built LDAP integration with LDAP server. Supported servers include Red Hat Directory Server, OpenDS, and OpenLDAP.
- Google Gadget Integration: Now, developers have a simplified way to drop any Google Gadget as portlets. Google Gadgets are mini-applications that work with the Google homepage, Google Desktop, or any page on the web and can range from simple HTML to complex applications. Examples include a calendar,a weather globe, or a media player.”
Here is my take on new release: There has been a significant change in the product usability but I still feel it lags in front of its competitor open source product, Liferay. Though the drag and drop feature is implemented but its no where near what Liferay provides. Google Gadget integration has added much life to the portal which lags the number portlets available out-of-the-box. Pre-built LDAP integration is nice and JBoss jBPM is really capable to handle pretty complex workflows. Above all one thing that remains same from many versions is that it works only on JBoss Application server and this totally defeat Liferay’s SOA point of view (Service Oriented Liferay).