JBoss Portal gets a bit more decoupled (soon)

In news from last month's JBoss World conference, JBoss Portal will as of Version 2.7, due out in Q3 2008, use a new portlet container that supports the Portlet 2.0 specification (JSR 286). Also the portal platform no longer requires JBoss Application Server (AS).

Support for more application platforms is particularly significant as this enables customers to leverage their existing platform investments, rather than forcing them to also adopt the JBoss AS. Support for more application servers has been on the roadmap for JBoss Portal since January 2007, when BEA WebLogic Server was mentioned and expected due out in Q3 2007. Note, however, that with this news, still only Tomcat will be supported as an alternative to JBoss AS.

Other open source enterprise portals, e.g. Liferay, already support 14 different application platforms, including BEA, IBM, and Oracle. On the commercial side, interestingly most major portal vendors only support their very own platform, e.g., IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.

When a portal software supplier only supports its own application server platform, it certainly seems to contradict the idea of loosely coupled software. As a buyer you need to understand that in 2008, selecting an enterprise portal platform might lock you into a specific application server.

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