New York University

Computer Science Department

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

 

Final Exam – Web Services and Portlets

 

Due Date: 12/17/03 by Midnight

 

Course Title: Application Servers                                            Course Number: g22.3033-011

Instructor: Jean-Claude Franchitti                                            Session: 15

 

 

1. Background on Web Services Computing Environments and Portlets

 

A “Web Service” is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are network accessible through standardized XML messaging.

 

Portals are commonly used to provide people with access to information and applications in a condensed form.

 

Portlets are single purpose UI components that can be aggregated to build complicated portals. When portlets are used, a portal becomes a container of customizable portlets.

 

Web Services and Portlets can be integrated in two ways: (a) portlets may use Web Services as a backend, and (b) portlets may be described, wrapped and published as Web Services.

 

2. Problem Definition and Suggested Steps

 

In this final assignment, you are asked to specify a simple GUI-based business application that can be implemented using a combination of Presentation and Data Web Services involving both (a) and (b) as per section 1 above. You should restrict yourself to what you feel is feasible based on time and the level of support provided by the component infrastructures available. You then need to implement a prototype of your application using mainstream (open source) portlet development tools. You may reuse application services developed as part of your ongoing course project. If you decide to do so, you may wish to extend the application service(s) you developed so far to motivate the need for migration to a Web Services for Remote Portlets platform as a way to handle flexible access to your application components in a GUI-intensive service-trading environment. Your application should be tuned for efficiency as allowed by the component infrastructure software.

 

3. Deliverables

 

1.       Report documenting your business application and explaining its motivation. Please include as many screen-shots as possible. Your report should include comments regarding your assessment of potential performance limitations inherent to WSRP-based architectures.

 

2.       Software archive of your component-base solution.

 

3.       Readme file documenting required software installation steps for (2), and a simple test scenario.

 

4.       Document the benefits and deficiencies of the Web Service/Portlet approach in general and specific to your application.

Note: Please provide an electronic copy of your final exam submission as one zip archive by sending it to the instructor by 12/17/03 at midnight. The archive should include your application software archive, the readme file describing the environment setup required to run your application, and your homework report (in word or text format). You should name your archive using the following convention: name_final_fa03.zip, where name may include additional underscore characters as needed. You are also required to provide a hard copy of your homework reports by placing it in your instructor’s mailbox.

 

6. Grading

 

All finals will be graded on a maximum scale of 10 points. Your grade will be based equally on:

 

a.       The applicability of the business application selected.

b.       The overall quality of your documentation.

c.       The understanding and appropriate use of related application server related technologies.

d.       Your ability to submit working and well-commented code.

e.       Extra credit may be granted for solutions that are particularly creative.