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| Building a Secured Corporate Web Application Infrastructure | ||
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| May 2003 | ||
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| DeveloperNet University Course | ||
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Novell Portal Services (NPS)
NPS Keys Technologies
NPS is completely built on industry standards. Because it uses open industry standards, Novell Portal Services works across a variety of network platforms and integrates data and applications from many sources.
- XML/XST--transforms data presentation.
- HTML--integrates nearly any Web page or portions of a Web page.
- Java and JDBC--provides the deepest form of integration with disperse databases.
- RSS--provides news-feed integration.
- LDAP v3--provides authentication and authorization through a directory.
- HTTP--provides firewall-friendly access to secure resources.
Flexibility and Scalability Across Multiple eBusiness Platforms. A single directory object--the portal configuration object--controls all of the customized layouts for a particular portal, thereby enabling you to run that single portal on many Web servers. Using the portal configuration object, you can manage all portals centrally rather than on a server-by-server basis.
Novell Portal Services also runs on most popular eBusiness platforms (including NetWare, Windows NT/2000, Linux, and Solaris), making it one of the most flexible services to implement in any corporate environment.
NPS Architecture
NPS requires a Web Application Server such as Jakata Tomcat, and Novell eDirectory. eDirectory is used for the following functions:
- Authentication
- Storing the NPS configuration information
- Storing user access right information
Figure 14: When a user access to NPS and is authenticated the portal is executed in the Web Application Server.
As seen in Figure 14, when a user access to NPS and is authenticated the portal, a set of gadgets which come with NPS or developed in-house or third party companies is executed in the Web Application Server. A gadget is an application that executes within the portal and presents a window to specific content that covers part or all of a portal page. A gadget provides the data and the layout necessary to render its piece of the page. Typically, a gadget returns both an XML data stream and the URL of an XSLT style sheet that transforms the data into HTML for display. Many gadgets also receive and respond to input from the user who submits a form, selects a link, or performs some other action directed at that particular gadget. Most gadgets also interface with one or more external data sources such as applications, directories, databases, and web sites.
High Level Design
The high level implementation of NPS, complete with gadgets, is as follows:
- User logs on and requests database information
- Request is forwarded to the gadget responsible for that information
- Gadget accesses client's authentication information from the directory
- Gadget retrieves information from the back-end server
- Gadget presents information to the Novell Portal Services servlet as an XML stream
- Information is delivered to user
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