Hi, I keep hearing these 2 buzzwords, portal and portlet? Can anyone give a description of what these things are or a link? I did a search on Google, but surprisingly did not find anything but tool vendors. many thanks, Barry
Hi, Portlets are web components -like Servlets- specifically designed to be aggregated in the context of a composite page. Usually, many Portlets are invoked to in the single request of a Portal page. Each Portlet produces a fragment of markup that it s combined with the markup of other Portlets, all within the Portal page markup.
If you are a returning customer at Amazon or you have signed up for particular news items at Yahoo, you are using a portal. The page you see is generated on the fly based on what the site knows about you.
MyYahoo is a good example, where you identify the content you want to see, then it is retrieved from the various sources you selected. Check here for a good overview of one popular portal vendor.