Oracle Introduces DIY Portal-Building For End-Users

By Mitch Wagner

Oracle introduced enhancements to its portal software designed to allow end-users to make changes to enterprise portals, just as end-users now change their browser home pages and bookmarks.

The company is unveiling enhancements to its portal software designed to make it easier for nontechnical people to tap into Web services and other data sources without help from programmers. The vendor also plans to debut software that clips information from corporate Web sites and adds it to personal portals.

People would use OmniPortlet build their own portlets -- windows within desktop portals -- that tap into information from databases, Web sites, spreadsheets, and Web services. That information can be displayed in a customized fashion on people's desktops. Today, programmers usually are needed to build portlets, especially when Web services are involved.

"Until now, vendors have positioned portals as a difficult technology that always require bringing application developers into the mix, but we are seeing portals as the new desktop for the business user," said John Magee, vice president for Oracle 9i Application Server Product Marketing.

New Web Clipping software lets people capture content and data from intranet Web sites and present them as portlets within their own portals. A production manager, for example, might tap into a company's inventory-management site to have inventory data displayed within her personal portal.

Analysts have mixed views about the new software. Integrating data sources will be the dominant initiative among corporate portal owners this year, says David Schatsky, Jupiter Research's research director. "Making that easier for companies is the right move," he says of OmniPortlet. Some competing vendors such as Sybase Inc. and Plumtree Software Inc. sell similar data-integration capabilities, he says.

Not so fast, says Forrester Research analyst Nate Root. "Portal development isn't a business-user function. IT doesn't want it to be a business-user function," he says. "The way to break the development bottleneck is to give IT better tools, not try to circumvent IT."

The development tools allow IT managers to keep control over who is allowed to make portlet changes, and how much latitude to give users.

Starting Jan. 20, OmniPortlet and Web Clipping will be available for download from the Oracle Technology Network Web site at no additional cost as part of the Oracle9i Application Server Portal Developer Kit. The software also will be built into the next release of Oracle9i Application Server due to ship by mid-year. The cost of OmniPortlet and Web Clipping is included in the cost of Oracle 9i Application Server, Standard Edition, which is $10,000 per processor.