websphere portal 6.1 development - which web framework to use?

Question

I am starting a portal project using websphere portal server 6.1. This involves lot of portlets and i am inclined to use JSR286 specs rather than JSR168

Also, i wanted to use Spring Portlet MVC but 3.0 release is still in M2 and does not have proper documentation for the new features added.

Should i start using Spring v2.5.6 and later migrate? Would it involve much rework later?

Is there a better alternative?

Also, is there a prepackaged framework available like AppFuse?

Thanks,

Gaurav

Answer 1

I think you should look at the roadmap for Spring Portlet MVC, maybe you can start using the M2 release and later upgrade. If you are planning to use AJAX, the 286 spec has AJAX support (resource urls) for portlets, whith the 168 spec you have to hack your way with servlets. Another difference is the event architecture, where portlets can communicate using the jsr 286 api, with 168 you can't do that out of the box.

I know that struts guys are also planning to do a 286 plugin. Take your time and weight the pros and cons.

As a final note, I recommend you to use a lightweight portal to develop, and later deploy on websphere (your portlets will have to be fully compliant though), since webspehere is reputadely slow.