in terms of efficiency and expandability, how does iPlanet Portal software differ from a portal

In my opinion the fact that the portal uses primarily JAVA, lends itself to quite a bit of expandability. I think it will be quite difficult for a portal written in PHP (Such as PHP Nuke) to share user session and state information accross multiple machines/instances. The iPlanet portal server has been designed to accomodate this, through the use of specialised session services. The threading model in Java also lends itself to greater efficiency when executing multiple tasks, whereas a portal based on PERL, would have to start a new process everytime a service is requested, which can then become VERY resource intensive.

In terms of expandability, the fact that it is contaned inside a JAVA VM will allow you to develop and deploy alot of custom developed applications for your portal. There is also quite a good portal API for the iPlanet portal server that will allow you to tap into the Logging,Session,Profile and Authentication services provided by the portal.

Hope this helps!

chrismulderza at 2007-6-29 3:11:42 >