The open-source alternative

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll need a pricey portal for your enterprise or departmental project. The big-ticket suites arguably offer larger feature sets and broader support, but they’re by no means the only deal in town.

Metadot, a popular and well-respected portal server, is available as a free download under the GNU General Public License. Metadot is designed to run primarily on the open source LAMP platform — Linux, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database, and the Perl programming language. The Perl application can also be run on Solaris and Windows, and can be configured to use Oracle instead of MySQL.

Metadot Portal Server Version 6 proffers a wealth of business-friendly features. Its strength is a central, password-protected repository for uploading and downloading documents, including version control and content management. Rich text messages can be sent between authorized portal users, and threaded discussion forums help employees coordinate work and manage projects. Newer versions have LDAP-based user authentication and XML-based import/export; there’s even an API for adding new portlets to the portal.

The downside? You’re not going to find rich design tools or a high level of support for complex document and image formats in Metadot. It’s also not compliant with the JSR 168 or WSRP specifications for separating portlets from portals.

But then this server is geared for the smaller business, distributed project team, or department. As a basic, full-featured, extensible portal, it’s well worth considering if you don’t mind assembling and managing a solution based on a variety of disparate open source applications.

Another alternative is Gluecode Advanced Server, an open source portal from Gluecode Software written in Java and based on Jetspeed, a Java/XML portal from the Apache Software Foundation’s Jakarta project. It comes closer to resembling the big dogs in the portal marketplace, including sophisticated XML and content management and Web services interoperability. It’s also compliant with the WSRP spec, which Gluecode helped develop.

Out of the box, Gluecode includes the Hypersonic SQL database and is set up to run on the Apache 1.3 Web server, JBoss 3.0 J2EE app server, and either Red Hat Linux or a Windows server. If those don’t suit your tastes, it can be configured for any standard J2EE 1.4-compliant app server and JDBC-compliant database. I like Gluecode’s heavy-duty content indexing, including indexing of PDF and Office documents, and its very granular access controls and security settings via access control list or LDAP integration. It also contains a rich e-mail client portlet that integrates with Microsoft Exchange Server.

Neither Gluecode nor Metadot has the wealth of industry partnerships, third-party support, and marquis branding of the market’s fat cats. But if you’re seeking portal value, the open source community is worth a look.