Oracle's DIY Personal-Portal Apps On The WayOracle's DIY Personal-Portal Apps On The Way

Oracle is unveiling enhancements to its portal software designed to make it easier for nontechnical people to tap into Web services and other data sources without help from programmers. The vendor also is expected to debut software that clips information from corporate Web sites and adds it to personal portals.

People would use OmniPortlet build their own portlets--windows within desktop portals--that tap into information from databases, sites, spreadsheets, and Web services. That information can be displayed in a customized fashion on people's desktops. Today, programmers usually are needed to build portlets, especially when Web services are involved.

The new Web Clipping software lets people capture content and data from intranet Web sites and present them as portlets within their own portals. A production manager, for example, might tap into a company's inventory-management site to have inventory data displayed within her personal portal.

Analysts have mixed views about the new software. Integrating data sources will be the dominant initiative among corporate portal owners this year, says David Schatsky, Jupiter Research's research director. "Making that easier for companies is the right move," he says of OmniPortlet. Some competing vendors such as Sybase Inc. and Plumtree Software Inc. sell similar data-integration capabilities, he says.

Not so fast, says Forrester Research analyst Nate Root. "Portal development isn't a business-user function. IT doesn't want it to be a business-user function," he says. "The way to break the development bottleneck is to give IT better tools, not try to circumvent IT."

Starting Jan. 20, OmniPortlet and Web Clipping will be available for free download from the Oracle Technology Network Web site as part of the Oracle9i Application Server Portal Developer Kit. The software also will be built into the next release of Oracle9i Application Server due to ship by mid-year.