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Portal servers are popular for enterprises, because they provide a mechanism to aggregate multiple web-based applications, including news feeds and content management. The applications running in portals are called portlets, and they are specified by JSR 168 and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP).
Software vendors have responded with compliant portal servers, and some of the more popular portal servers are made by RedHat/JBoss, IBM, BEA, Oracle, Sun, Vignette, SAP and Plumtree.
Some organizations have attempted to have a Flash-based portal web application, and plug in HTML or Flash portlets. One trick has been to use iframes to display HTML in front of the Flash - however, that approach is fraught with problems. The open source Anvil project addresses this need with a Flex-based portal application.
Anvil is powered by a Java-based server that uses LiveCycle or Blaze Data Services with Spring and Spring Security. Java / Spring Beans as exposed as remote flex services. Anvil portlets are called 'pods', and are implemented as Flex modules. Modules are secure, loaded and unloaded, cached and displayed. Ant scripts build both the server (Java) and client (Flex), and can deploy automatically. Anvil includes a Java to ActionScript class generator, and an Eclipse project generator.
Anvil can generate Flex or AIR applications. Flex applications do not have very good HTML support, but AIR applications use the WebKit engine, built into the AIR runtime. This means that Anvil-powered portal servers which power portals packaged as AIR applications can have embedded HTML, including portlets written in PHP, JSP, Flash, etc.
For further information:
- An Introduction to Anvil
- Using Macromedia Flex in a Portal Environment
- Providing Rich Portlets with Adobe Flex
- Introducing Java Portlet Specifications: JSR 168 and JSR 286
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Hey Mike, cool stuff, will definitely check this out.
A point to note:
"but AIR applications use the system HTML renderer."
AIR applications actually use the WebKit engine, built into the AIR runtime, to render the HTML
I meant to correct the WebKit info, thanks for catching it.
Interesting, it have some common ideas and technologies with our Flex Cms/eCommerce open source project Igenko (http://code.google.com/p/igenko/).
I am going to have a look at their code to compare more deeply both projects.
i was taking a look at this project the other day and noticed that they have a faster flex sdk compiler... not sure how it works but there are many good things inside this project...
even if you are not interested in developing a flex portal, it is worth your while to take a closer look...
Ryan - which project were you referring to?
Well...I was taking a look at this project the other day and noticed that they have a faster flex sdk compiler not sure how it works but there are many good things inside this project. Even if you are not interested in developing a flex portal, it is worth your while to take a closer look.
Matt - club penguin
Hey Mike, cool stuff, will definitely check this out.
A point to note:
"but AIR applications use the system HTML renderer."
AIR applications actually use the WebKit engine, built into the AIR runtime, to render the HTML
David from Webkinz
That is weird, I fixed that error last December, as you can see from the previous comments. I'll fix it again. Thanks for catching it.
I think this project has a great flex dsk compiler. There seems to be loads of good things in this project. I would recommend everyone take a closer look.