Experiences With Portal Infrastructure

Alan Cookacook@ufl.edu

Alan Cookacook@ufl.edu

Major Focus of the Presentation

The primary focus will be on the interoperability of the portal with your backend systems

There are many pieces to this puzzle. The most critical of these will be covered. Some of these issues have been discussed before in the other presentations. Those addressed here will all come together to make your portal a very nice tool for your users or just another application for which they will need to remember a userid and password.

The Pieces…

Establishing both, short term and long term target users

Determine authentication mechanism Using centralized roles/rules to access

data in disparate places

The Pieces…

Establishing trusted, secure connections to external processes and data

Enabling access to external applicationsResources for the actual

implementation of the portalOther issues relating to presenting

these data on a portal

Target Users for the Portal

Who do you need use a portal? This is for others to discuss but it is

important to know because it will/should influence the infrastructure needs

Students/patients Hard to limit browser type Somewhat limited application set

Staff/care providers Not quite as hard to limit browser type Very diverse application set

Target Users for the Portal

Other issues as well Scalability needs Password Management

Change frequently or change infrequentlyAbility to change passwordAbility to restore passwordCreate new userids

Multiple authentication mechanisms Multiple authorization mechanisms

Establishing Trusted and Secure Authentication

Methodologies

How do you know who the user is?Single signon - crosswalk database

Lots of variability on this issue

Establishing Trusted and Secure Authentication

Methodologies

Preferably the portal will work with already established authentication methodologies Authenticating the user using RACF Authenticating the user to an externally supplied

application running in another CICS region Using NDS/Active Directory authentication Using LDAP and Kerberos Using user an externally supplied application like a

PIN routine Authenticating the user at their home institution in

the state Florida - FACTS

Establishing Trusted and Secure Authentication

Methodologies

Very important to position yourself to be able to use the new technologies when they are matured and/or agreed upon

What Is the User Allowed to Do?

Combining roles into fewest possible number of databases

Trusted relationships for role passingRules that apply to information

retrievalCommon directory across the

enterprise

Using Centralized Roles to Access Data in Disparate

Places

Using data from disparate sources Mainframe

RDS report generation Proprietary CICS generated data

Network drives Java i.E..XAC Java dynamic PDF creation Report access

Using Centralized Roles to Access Data in Disparate

Places

External proprietary data bases Visual info imaging index queries Visual info images

Other sitesFACTS - retrieving real-time data from all

over the state of Florida

Enabling the Existence of “Portal Friendly” Applications

Participating in authenticationCross walk database to store multiple

userids• Proprietary • Kerberos• Browser cookies

Sharing state managementEnabling external state management

Coordinating logoffs

Enabling the Existence of “Portal Friendly” Applications

Sharing context (mainly for staff and care providers)Notification of when the student/patient

being viewed has changed

Resources Required to Produce and Retrieve

Needed Data

Current skill sets Of those who produce the data Of those who need the data

Current availability Of those who produce the data Of those who need the data

Resources Required to Produce and Retrieve

Needed Data

Current hardware capabilities Must allow for heavy peak loads Must allow for large number of users Reliable platform (always available) Of those who produce the data Of those who need the data

Current software capabilities Of those who produce the data Of those who need the data

Other Issues Relating to Presenting These Data

EDI systems vs. XML based communications Speed vs. standards based processing Development speed or delivery speed

Guidelines When Evaluating a Portal Infrastructure

What do you need on the portal? Need to decide on your business needs

Form vs. Function

Some infrastructure goals should be SPA - single point of access CARR - condensing authorization roles and

rules Simplified content management

EAGLEEAGLE is a product of is a product of

Wrap-up

Questions?