IBM Lotus and WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Catalog - Web Application Bridge Portlet

Do you have a requirement to integrate existing web applications into WebSphere Portal ? Do you find the existing solutions: -

• iFrame / Web Page Portlet
• Web Clipping
• Web Application Integrator
• Imported Page
• Creative Commons HTTP Client
• etc.
• etc.

to be unsuitable for your particular functional requirements ?

In which case, please allow me to introduce you to the newly released Web Application Bridge portlet, which was uploaded to the Catalog today.

If you recall, I wrote about this a few weeks ago: -

WebSphere Portal Version 7.0 software also introduces the new web application bridge (WAB), providing organizations with enhanced flexibility to integrate existing web applications for security-rich, personalized delivery through their portal solutions.

The WAB provides a proxied web environment that enables presentation of external web content without requiring URL redirection or content introspection.

This new technology is designed to make it easier than ever to integrate existing web applications and dynamically present content through the portal, including Microsoft .NET or Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) applications and existing Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications.

I've been using this portlet in beta for the past few weeks, but I am pleased to announce that it's now available for YOU to use as well.

In essence, the bridge is formed of two parts; a proxy that runs as a servlet within the delivery portal server and makes the connection to the remote web application / site and an iFrame portlet that connects directly to the proxy.

This means that the existing UI can be preserved, but that all the control, authentication etc. remains where it should remain e.g. within the proxy servlet.

I'd recommend that you take a look ...