I have reviewed these documents. I have some thoughts about them...
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/weblogic/portal/files/wlp_10gr3_sod.pdf
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/portal/pdf/oracle_portal_sod_r11.pdf
Oracle Portal, Oracle WebLogic Portal, and Oracle WebCenter Suite are all sepparate offerings/product suites. Portal products are extensions of their respective app servers (OAS, and Oracle WebLogic), which are geared toward developing portals -- sites and pages which display and allow interaction with other sites and pages -- portlets.
WebCenter Suite includes the following items:
WebCenter Framework -- a JDev extension to help you do more Web 2.0, BI, and SOA stuff.
WebCenter Services -- I am guessing these are either the enabling libraries the the above JDev extension, or maybe they are sepparate program, or perhaps even web services.
WebCenter Interaction -- a development team collaboration suite (formerly BEA Aqualogic User Interaction)
WebCenter Anywhere -- wireless services (hardware? local or remote/hosted?) that let you get alerted to events generated by your webcenter apps, or interact with them, using various portable devices (blackberries, etc.)
I am also reading another document to round out my understanding of web center: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/webcenter/pdf/owcs_10132_standards.pdf
So we ask the questions: What about all of our Portal work? Is it integratable? Are they planning on merging/phasing out/replacing Portal?
After reading the WebLogic Portal and Oracle Portal statements of direction above, I am under the impression that Oracle is doing what Oracle does best: obtaining/promoting competing products, and letting them fight to the death. It looks to me that the Oracle Portal longevity is being promoted a bit more than the Oracle WebLogic Portal product (suite)...but the documents seem to like both products and highlight aspects of both that are being highly praised and integrated, and also other parts that are being sifted out. I think both documents point to a future time when the portal products will be part of a larger product suite...perhaps WebCenter.
After reading these, I come away feeling assured that there is probably going to be continuing support for these products, and that any integration or communication between the portal world and the WebCenter/ADF/application world is going to be supported -- we will probably have to end up choosing which integration method makes the most sense.
Also I feel that Oracle sees Web 2.0 as an evolution of Portal-type thinking. Vedy interestink...hmmmm....
2 comments:
Hi Michael,
Hope you're doing well (we met at RMOUG in 2007).
Interesting thoughts. You may want to check out the presentation that Thomas Kurian delivered shortly after the BEA acquisition: http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/product-roadmap-for-enterprise-20-after-bea-acquisition/ .
One of your last paragraphs sums it up pretty well - again, details in the above reference presentation:
"After reading these, I come away feeling assured that there is probably going to be continuing support for these products, and that any integration or communication between the portal world and the WebCenter/ADF/application world is going to be supported"
Peter Moskovits
Oracle WebCenter Product Management
http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com
Peter! So nice to hear from you. I totally remember your presentation. I was going to present again this year, but employment got in the way :-) (lol). Thanks so much for your comment; your agreement lends credence to my perceptions, I think.
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