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Hello.
I have been vacant on this mailing list for a while. The reasons for this
absence will be explained shortly. I would like to apologize in advance for the
controversial nature of this e-mail.
After creating the Jetspeed project and driving it to the point where it was
about 8 months ago, I learned a LOT about what to do and what not to do when
building a Jetspeed like application.
I use the term "Jetspeed like application" because I believe the term Portal or
Enterprise Information Portal has been used incorrectly. A lot of people have
applied the term Portal to describe a client/server application which is behind
a centralized web server.
I do not believe this is the future of this technology.
I believe the term Portal should be redefined to describe a fully distributed,
XML centric, syndication framework with the addition of services such as
Reputation, XML based content syndication, P2P style functionality (node-to-node
caching, node-to-node syndication, HTTP layer which doesn't use DNS, etc),
micropayment integration and language translation services. Privacy protection
should also make up a significant portion of the project and it should support
distributed, nym based authentication (which can drive reputation).
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I believe this describes the
type of power this technology could give to the individual.
http://relativity.yi.org/portal.png
To that end, a friend (Fen Labalme) and I founded the OpenPrivacy project
(http://www.openprivacy.org) and spent the last 8 months in research and
development mode trying to figure out where this stuff was going. We began by
focusing on using Reputation to measure the quality of distributed resources
(URLs) and tried to incorporate this into correctly measuring privacy concerns
so that one can use the system without fear of the Orwellian issues that arise
from fully uniform and traceable systems.
If you accept my redefinition of the term Portal it quickly becomes clear that
Jetspeed won't solve these problems. The problem is that Jetspeed is a Java/Web
application which uses XML in a limited manner. The correct interpretation
should realize that XML is what is *most* important and that Java and any other
specific technologies are used simply to optimize and transform XML.
The Reptile project (http://reptile.openprivacy.org) was created to solve these
problems and provide an implementation of this technology. Since its creation
about a month ago the Reptile project has made amazing progress.
- From an architecture perspective, Reptile is significantly different from
Jetspeed. First off there is no plugin API. The only way content can make it
into Reptile is via XML and a contentType. That said developers can still use
Java code to produce XML and integrate it any way they want.
Jetspeed could not function without the Portlet API. This is especially true
because a lot of Jetspeed's own UI is generated with Portlets. Reptile handles
this problem with Xalan extensions. This also has the added advantage of
providing Reptile with a plugin architecture which supports other languages
besides Java including Python, Javascript, etc due to the IBM Bean Scripting
framework.
Another main difference is that there is no PSML. Instead we use a system of
layout, control and page schemas which can produce the same output but in a much
more flexible manner.
We have no capability system like the Jetspeed capability map. I expect this to
be integrated soon but it is currently at a low priority. It will probably be
integrated into our sequence dispatch system.
Reptile does not use Turbine. I have mixed feelings about this. In some ways
Turbine is great but in others it is a hindrance. Hopefully we can come up with
a solution to this soon. I really feel that Turbine should to be split into
multiple projects. Right now there is just too much code in one place.
We do have PortletControl functionality within Reptile but it doesn't use Java
and instead uses XML and a dedicated namespace.
Due this new design I believe that it is currently more advanced that Jetspeed.
The main advantage that Jetspeed provides is that people are currently using it
right now and it is stable. I would invite everyone here to take a look at
Reptile and see what they think.
Reptile still has a bit of growing to do. CVS is currently very stable but I
have refrained from doing a 0.0.1 release due to that fact that I want to
incorporate more Reputation technology and features. Hopefully these will start
landing over the next month and we will have a 0.0.1 release shortly.
Thank you.
Kevin
Resources
- website: http://reptile.openprivacy.org/
- screenshots: http://reptile.openprivacy.org/screenshots
- current status http://reptile.localhost/features.shtml
- snapshots http://www.openprivacy.org/nightlies
- --
Kevin A. Burton ( [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] )
Cell: 408-910-6145 URL: http://relativity.yi.org ICQ: 73488596
Free Software! Join the Software Jihad!
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