Hi,
We are considering choosing between weblogic and websphere for our custom portal application for the company. Which one do you think in better for portal application? What are the pros and cons or issues both app servers have? Any links to some indepedent source with white papers on the topic will also be highly appreciated. Thanks.

BEA Portal 8.1 is simply incomparable. The WebLogic Workshop IDE makes developing portals (and portlets) very, very easy. You see, it's almost a WYSIWYG Portal IDE, and you can preview any changes instantly (there is no deployment hassle at all, and no need to restart the server all the time). WebSphere Portal as far as I know doesn't even get close.

It is indeed very easy for you to download the BEA Platform and try it. Unlike IBM, BEA documentation is excellent. You will be able to follow step-by-step instructions to create a Portal and some portlets - and the machine *real* requirements are not absurd (for a Portal, of course).

The way I see it: if you enjoy suffering, go with WebSphere. If you like self-mutilation, try its Portal.

BEA Platform is worth every single cent.

Thanks Andre. I've used Weblogic portal a bit and I quite agree with the statement that it's very easy and intuitive to use. I've not used websphere at all and was interested knowing more about what people have to say about it.

Hi Aroman,
I've been using websphere portal (4.2.1) for a year now. I think it's very good. It's actually based on concepts and code from JetSpeed (the jakarta project) with IBM additions on the front of enterprise features (SSO / WebServices / Application integration / Manageability etc. etc.)

From a developer standpoint i think it's quite good, you get WSAD (IBM WebSphere Studio IDE) and the portlet development toolkit so you can build portlets directly in the IDE using all the good things WSAD provides, if you have enough memory you can even install the WebSphere Portal Test Environment to run portlets directy into your IDE, so you can place brackpoints etc directly in your code/jsp and live test it.
Another good thing is the support for the stuts framework in portles.

From a system administrator standpoint it's also very good, you install it and then you can automate almost every management task using scripts and automation tools like Ant.

Actually WebSphere Portal 5.0 is shipping with added features and with the new WebSphere Application Server. I don't agree with Andre, WebSphere is not evil, you just need to get to know it. IBM has been doing a great job providing resources and docs in his developerworks site (WebSphere Portal Zone -> http://www.ibm.com/websphere/developer)

Soon WebSphere Portal 5.0 will ship a fixpack wich will add the just approved JSR168 final specifications for standard portles. IBM is also providing to Jakarta the Pluto test container for JSR168 portles. With this fixpack WPS (WebSphere Portal Server) will support both the IBM portlet model (more powerful) and the standardized JSR168 Portlet Model.

I don't know at all Weblogic's portal but I can tell WPS is very good, you must expect a 2/3 months period before you get producing portlets at full speed but that's the minimum for such a complex platform.

Other than this you get the Collaboration API (in the Extend version) wich allows you to integrate chat/confernce features directy in the portal if you need them.

P.S.
A portal is not just made of portlets before choosing your platform verify what you can customize in terms of user profile/personalization services/security model on the structure of the portal/look and feel and so on.

Happy playing :)

I had been using WebLogic Portal 8.1 for a few months now. I think it is pretty good for BEA's marketing, not yet for full fledged development though. First of all, it needs a huge RAM. I have a GIG already. But still, it is fairly slow when I edit JSPs. You are tied to use the "netui" tags for every thing. But the fact that most of those tags dont support "run time expressions" just hurts pretty bad. They support some thing like "EL"s, but not fully. It may work simply superb for running a demo, but "very hard" for day-to-day coding. And most of the stuff has to be edited in the Workshop. Well, it is being project as a complete IDE. But they are not there yet. Obviously, you can't have all those good (some what basic) features your favorite IDE provides to make you, well... productive.

I don't know any thing about WebSphere portal. Personally being an Eclipse fan, I think WebSphere portal would be nice. Added advantage: it integrates nicely with WSAD and every thing can be done from with in Eclipse. Even if, WebSphere misses some of the BEA's "advanced & complicated to use" features, they will catch up like they always do.

Thanks folks. It's quite helpful discussion.

On the question of memory and integration with IDE, isn't it pretty much the case in both products? I've heard that WS takes up a lot of memory space as well, and is slow. Same thing with integration. WL workshop allows your application (whether portal or web or ejb or integration or webservices) to be integrated with other components residing at one central point.

As far as JSP tag expressions are concerned, from what I understand, they are part J2EE specification and weblogic as a J2EE platform has to comply with it. Krishna, are you sure not all EL expressions don't work and it's not simply a case of not properly placing the libraries or tld etc? I've not personally developed whole a lot of JSPs in weblogic yet so can't say either way.

Hi Guys,

I am doing a comparison of Websphere and Weblogic Portal Server.
 
I have some queries on Weblogic Portal Server 8.1. And some of you will be working on it and can help me.

Weblogic Portal Server 8.1 supports JSR 168. So if another server supports JSP 168 we can migrate the portles to it. But a lot of work goes into administration for portlets. Can it be migrated to another server as well? Someone has any clues to this? Also what can be the risks invloved in migrating from one portal server to another? eg. Websphere to Weblogic. What is overall TCM(total cost of maintenance)?

Weblogic Portal Server supports portlet to porlet communication. Can a portlet talk to another portlet on the same page? Or can it talk to a portlet on a different page as well. In Websphere portlets can talk to other portlets on the same page only. Websphere Portal Server supports wiring of portlets? Does Weblogic Portal Server has any such feature?

Which is better and why? I will be highly thankful if someone can help me on this.

regards
Shweta

hi shewta,

I think the needs of a portal for an enterprise is a vital part towards B2B integration, MDI etC....

I have been working for quite sometime with broadvision, silverstream extend,etc... non J2EE portals. from a couple of years i am working with websphere & right now i am using BEA portal.

But, i think as of today products like J2EE portals are commparitvely less industralized than other portals technologies.

On getting into details on JSR 168/170, you would really see that at innner usage of portletting you B2B platform, JSR needs much more normalization on webclipping , inter portlet notifications, segmentation of content etc....

Hence i think one should not expect a TCM higher when using portals in a multi-platform based enviornnement.

But, if you can restrict your platform choice to one then the question to be asked a part TCM is to know what contents do you intend to put into your portal.

I think if you are absolutely sure to get into J2EE based portals. Websphere provides you flexible ways of deisgning your portal applications. BEA WorkShoip & portals are a excellent way to assemble & integrate your portal application. But, in terms of maturity & flexibility of developpement on demand, i think websphere expresses certain maturity in this technology.

my two cents.... hope it helps...

I dont see Sucess stories about portals.but now a days everybody talking about this portal technology..
I just gone through portals to check.
Weblogic is very simple to install and work,can installed in 30 min to 1 hr.WorkShop IDE is very nice for developemnt.
where as Websphere takes @ least 5-10 hrs to install.and u have to be patient while installation.unncessary stuff is installed.most of the time we wont use what ever it installs..there is no custom setup to disable some components. and working with IDE also nightmare .
now a days IBM saying RAD 6 for IDE..which eats all the memory and lot of memory leaks and performance issues..
i dont know why IBM works like this.remember all tools from ibm has performance issues. nobody complaints what?..
Now they say at least 2 GB ram is required for this portal test environment to install( remember it is not portal server only test environment into IDE).

apart from this, there is no sucess stories about this portals.

can anybody give some site which built on either IBM Portals or BEA weblogic portals.
I gues now portal hipe is going after webservices.

Hi folks, I agree with Mr. Doni as I 2 find the net ui tags and deployment 2 messy. net-ui tags are not 2 frendly and weblogic should get out of such vendor binding strategies. -S.Das

i am planning to use weblogic portal server with weblogic studio as a ide can you please rate the weblogic portal server by considering the following points with some examples or suggestions . comapare with the IBM websphere identity management Access management portel developement security using directory server personaliation content management please reply as soon as possible

Hi everybody, I am doing R&D on portals. I found some information here helpful ergarding weblogic & websphere, but they belong to at least two years ago. So, has anybody had any more recent experience on portals? To share my experience, I looked at the live demos of weblogic & websphere. I am new in portals, but, as I tried their demo portals they were close. I noticed a couple of problems as I tried to use drag & drop features on weblogic map portlet. In addition to these two, I tried liferay live demo. Then, I downloaded liferay+tomcat & tried to write my own portlet on it. Although I faced some issue on my experience to add new portlet ot it, liferay provides web 2 interface, as weblogic & websphere do & my experience on it was good. I liked this fact, that I can install liferay on different application servers, even on tomcat. That is good at least for development environment. Being open source was other point that makes it characterized, of course if there is a strong community gathered around it. I tried to look at some Demo from eXo, But I didn't find any. So, I stopped on it. Then I tried to find out which one of these portals are more popular. For that I looked at the jobs available for these tools in Monster/Dice. There were around 100 job titles for websphere. Then about 10-20 for weblogic. & Unfortunately, Just couple of job for liferay & eXo. (I search on job title, on the title description, I could find more.) It made me investigate more about portals Now, I am trying to find out if anyone has more advanced & recent experience on weblogic, websphere, liferay or eXo. & if so, how was that. Thanks Farid

I am using wls 9.2.. And what i can said it really Suck.... it performance is very very *N slow...which is totally unacceptable.. u need to wait for 10-15 to deploy an application and another 10-15 mins to star up the server. And i am running on 2gb ram machine... I will advise ppl never go for bea wls 9.2 portal.