Chapter 4. Managing the View

Our simple example in the last chapter demonstrated how a portlet functions, and described the various components that assist in the successful deployment and delivery of the portlet. However, realistic enterprise portal solutions perform complex functions, and users have diverse needs. This requires us to use tools and techniques that make our implementation quick, efficient and robust.

In this chapter, we will focus on views and presentation tier technologies. The presentation tier is the segment of the application that is responsible for building content that directly interacts with the user. Hence, it should be dynamic, flexible to changing tastes, and loosely coupled to the core business functions of the application. Starting with template?based implementations using Java Server Pages (JSP), we will eventually move on to use a component-based technique such as Java Server Faces(JSF).

We will then use all of this to build our example "MyCompany" intranet portal. We will create custom portlets using the view technologies, and add features to the portal application.