Web Portal Design, Execution and Sustainability for Naval Websites and Web Services

With the rapid evolution of Web-based technologies, keeping up with the latest trends is a complicated process. The newest Web Service is the development of Web Portals. Portals allow the design of Web Services in such a way as to allow users to define their own needs and create a home of their own within a site. As users become more proficient, knowledgeable, and demanding, this technology will expand due to the demand of its users. As with all new technology, it includes significant benefits and pitfalls. Determining where to best use Web Services and Portals is important. The plethora of tools being promoted for the development of portals is significant, and choosing the right tool to accomplish the task while ensuring compatibility is critical. Already, considerable work has been accomplished by Task Force Web (TF Web) and the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC). An important factor in the decision process is in meeting the demands of an ever-increasing technology literate environment. Reaching the goal of a fully connected Navy will require significant expenditure of money and manpower, but will reap large benefits from the long-term value of improved training and access to knowledge. This research focuses on the design and evaluation of Web Services and Web Portals. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter II provides information on Web site design, SIGGRAPH Online, SCORM, Mailing Lists, Hypermail Archives, Web Logging, DHTML, and several key standards. Chapter III defines and describes Web Services and Web Portals, how they differ, and the advantages of each. Chapter IV reviews open source Web Portal design software, specifically Apache Jetspeed, Plone, and uPortal. Chapter V looks at three organizations that are exploring the use of Web Portals. Chapter VI evaluates three Portals (Undersea Warfare (USW), FNMOC, and NPS's Dudley Knox Library), and Chapter VII provides recommendations for future work. (2 tables, 62 figures, 73 ref7
The original document contains color images.