Most popular portal servers, such as WebSphere® Portal, offer an easy-to-use wizard to hook a new portlet and utilize them throughout the portal server. Adding more portals becomes as easy as extending a configuration file, dragging and dropping of your ear/war file to a specific location, and getting them through the user interface.
Typical portal updates include an addition of the new portlet, advancement of features of existing portlets, and fixing issues in the portlet to ensure that each effort sweeps to production with a well-orchestrated deployment blueprint. Thus, all collaborated teams come together to deliver almost the same quality small product (portlets) to the release of the portal server version in an enterprise.
Each small development team would need to build and maintain a set of JavaScript and User interface files for fixing bugs and building enhancements which are tested, packaged, deployed to production.
In this use case study, we explain a scenario where UrbanCode Deploy (now DevOps Deploy) makes a very simple and highly efficient deployment while defining clear product structure.
We suggest the following when mapping a portal server project, as defined above, to UrbanCode Deploy terminologies or building blocks.
| Portal Product Requirements |
UrbanCode Deploy building block |
| Portal Server of the organization |
Application |
| Portlets / Widgets |
Components |
| Widget source code |
Source Configuration Management |
| Processing source code after changes |
Component Process
[Download artifact plug-in and bunch]
|
| General Portal server packaging & deployment steps |
Application process / Generic process
[Test sources, compress js/css files, minify resources, etc]
|
The following are the advantages observed:
- Overall, the enterprise portal itself can be visualized as an Application in UrbanCode Deploy – thus providing the ability to have a generic and common step to add many portlets.
- Each portlet represents a component within UCD – thus providing the ability to:
-
- Mirror a source configuration management system
-
- Define a set of automation, configuration, and deployment processes
-
- Deploy and manage portlets independently of other portlets
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- Maintain good governance through customized security and approvals
- Utilize templates to quickly create new applications or components.
- Use the export/import of process steps to easily re-use well thought portlet steps for any new portlet of future.
- Achieve a granular level of access permissions across the complete UrbanCode Deploy tool.
- (Optional) Implement high availability (HA) and scalability of UrbanCode Deploy of the server and its agents for fast-growing enterprises.
UrbanCode Deploy helps define efficient and orchestrated automation standards for complex enterprise portal services between diverse and collaborative teams. Successful implementations will see their teams deploy more frequently and at a greater speed which are key indicators of a high DevOps performer.
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