Every software development tool requires that the person using it has some basic knowledge before they start. Jetspeed is no exception.
In a typical project, there is a team of people with different areas of expertise. In that case, there may be some tasks that not everyone on the team would be comfortable in executing. This tutorial is designed to show the different steps in building a portal and we expect that everyone on the team should be able to follow this successfully.
In order to successfully build this tutorial, we expect that each person has some basic skills.
We expect that you can download and install software on your own workstation. This implies that you have system administration privileges on your workstation and can follow relatively simple instructions. None of the software required is difficult to install.
We expect that you know how to create system-wide environment variables on your workstation.
Although programming is not required to complete this tutorial, you will need to be able to program in order to build your own portlets or to add functionality to the basic Jetspeed-2 package. In addition, you will need to understand a bit about the HTTP Request/Response process to understand how a portal communicates with the browser.
Portlets are frequently written in Java and you will need at least a basic knowledge of Java to modify an existing portlet and fairly comprehensive knowledge of Java if you want to design a portlet from scratch.
There are many books and on-line resources for learning Java.
JSF can be used to present data and to control interactions with the user in a portlet. You will need a basic knowledge of JSF to modify an existing portlet and fairly comprehensive knowledge of JSF if you are designing a portlet from scratch.
There are a few books and on-line resources for learning JSF.
Velocity is used extensively in Jetspeed-2 and if you need to make changes to the functionality of Jetspeed-2, you will need to be able to code in Velocity. You will need a basic knowledge of Velocity to modify an existing portlet and fairly comprehensive knowledge of Velocity if you are designing a portlet from scratch.
Velocity is a fairly simple language to learn and there are very few books and on-line resources for learning Velocity.
JSP is used extensively in Jetspeed-2 and there is an entire module in the tutorial that talks about JSP. You will need a basic knowledge of JSP to modify an existing portlet that uses JSP and fairly comprehensive knowledge of JSP if you are designing a portlet from scratch.
There are a few books and on-line resources for learning JSP.
In the tutorial, we have provided simplied tools for data persistence and for hosting the Jetspeed Portal. However, most applications require some very specialized knowledge that not everyone is required to know. If you are going to build a real application with Jetspeed-2 you will need someone in each of the following areas of expertise
This includes both the programming and system administration aspects of handling data persistence. Jetspeed can handle most relational database systems as well as higher level tools such as Hibernate.
This includes both the configuring and system administration of a serlet engine that can deliver Jetspeed-2 functionality over the Internet. Jetspeed can run under a number of serlet engines and you will need someone who knows how to configure the servlet engine and how to deploy a web application under it.