I received a request from my users that they want is a common “portal” for any web applications from my development group. Currently, if we have X number of web apps, the user needs to know each web app links, and these web apps may look different from one another (no consistencies). Further, if the users move from one web app to another, they have to log in again and again.
That said, I understand their pain. We developers are building more and more small web apps and not only they are not centralized in one place, they look a little different one from another. So, I’m trying to figure out a way to have standardized look and feel for all web apps, and a means that allows the security to wrap across several applications so that the user needs to log in just one time.
After digging around, it seems like web portal might be the way to go where it presents one gateway for user to get to all web apps, and I believe it handles centralized look/feel and cross context security check.
A little of my development environment, I’m tied to Websphere Application Server. I was told not to use the Websphere Portal Server in my environment because they are moving away from it.
So, my question is: Is there a way to accomplish all this without using Websphere Portal? In another word, utilize some open source web portal that I can deploy in WAS and then probably utilize CAS to handle security across applications.
I want to know how you would handle this in your environment:-
- One gateway to all applications.
- Standardized look and feel.
- Log in once for all web applications.
Thanks much.
For portals one option is Liferay. Secondly, to make apps look the same you will have to come up with a common set of css that everyone applies for common components (ie. all buttons are gray on black) also known as enterprise look and feel. For log in once you are looking at implementing Single Sign on. Take a look at CAS.