System for Automatic Arrangement of Portlets on Portal Pages According to Semantical and Functional Relationship

• US 20070136329A1
• Filed: 09/12/2006
• Published: 06/14/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines SA (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines SA (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Kussmaul, Timo, Arning, Andreas
• Granted Patent: US 7,653,659 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

The present invention relates to the field of network computing, and in particular to method and system for designing a Web Portal comprising a hierarchical structure of portal pages and portlets for accessing Web contents accessible via the Portal. A typical larger enterprise'"'"'s portal contains large numbers, e.g., thousands of pages and portlets. Due to the complexity of an enterprise portal, manual administration is inefficient as it is time-consuming, error-prone and thus expensive. In order to overcome these disadvantages, it is proposed that a Portal according to the invention performs some mining of the portlet markup and/or that of the portlet description in order to autonomously compute and propose an enhanced portal content structure. This helps to provide a user-friendly content structure that reflects well the relationships between portlets.

Claims

1. A method for arranging portlets in a Web Portal comprising a hierarchical structure of portal pages and portlets, comprising:

retrieving data mining input data relating to said portlets;

performing a data mining function on said data mining input data, resulting in a data mining result revealing respective similarities between said portlets;

calculating a new content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near by each other on said portal pages; and

offering new pages with said new content structure.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said retrieving data mining input relating to said portlets is from a portlet markup.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said retrieving data mining input relating to said portlets is from a portlet description.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said retrieving data mining input relating to said portlets is from a portlet interaction description of portlets residing on said portal.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said revealed similarities between said portlets are semantic similarities.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said revealed similarities between said portlets are respective functional similarities.

7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of receiving an administrator feedback, indicating whether the calculated arrangement of portlets is accepted as a base version for a new Web Portal version.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the mining comprises performing a clustering of related portlets A, B into clusters X, Y, where portlet A is in cluster X and portlet B is in cluster Y.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein an inter-cluster distance D between cluster X and cluster Y is defined by aggregating the distance values of pairs of portlets A, B in said cluster X and said cluster Y, and wherein a web page is proposed which meets predetermined web page layout requirements including predetermined distance threshold values for portlets represented on a single web page.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the proposed web page layout depends on the size and figure of the visual representation of the markup aggregated from the portlets contained in cluster X and cluster Y.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein the inter-cluster distance D is calculated by computing the maximum of distances between all existing pairs of portlets residing in two different clusters, according to:

D=max{d(A, B) where portlet A is in cluster X and portlet B is in cluster Y}, and d is the distance between portlets.

12. The method according to claim 9, wherein the inter-cluster distance D is calculated by computing the average of distances between all existing pairs of portlets residing in two different clusters, according to:

D=avg{d(A, B) where portlet A is in cluster X and portlet B is in cluster Y}, and d is the distance between portlets.

13. The method according to claim 8, wherein an interaction factor (IFAC) between Portlet A and Portlet B is incremented, in the event that portlet A can handle properties published by portlet B and the distance between portlet A and portlet B is computed in dependence of said interaction factor.

14. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of receiving an administrator feedback including manually performed corrections on said offered new pages with said new content structure.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step of calculating said new content structure is based on iterations and starts with an existing portlet arrangement.

16. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step of calculating said new content structure is performed when a new portlet is to be installed on a page.

17. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

storing said new content structure separately from an existing content structure;

in response to a predetermined user action, determining modifications of the existing content structure having led to the new structure; and

offering a user input control for selectively adapting the existing content structure and respective web page layout to according to said modifications.

18. A portal server computer system including a computer readable medium, wherein said computer readable medium has program code stored thereon for arranging portlets in a Web Portal comprising a hierarchical structure of portal pages and portlets, wherein said program code comprises:

program code for retrieving data mining input data relating to said portlets;

program code for performing a data mining function on said data mining input data, resulting in a data mining result revealing respective similarities between said portlets;

program code for calculating a new content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near by each other on said portal pages; and

program code for offering new pages with said new content structure.

19. A computer program product including a computer readable medium, wherein said computer readable medium has program code stored thereon for arranging portlets in a Web Portal comprising a hierarchical structure of portal pages and portlets, wherein said program code comprises:

program code for retrieving data mining input data relating to said portlets;

program code for performing a data mining function on said data mining input data, resulting in a data mining result revealing respective similarities between said portlets;

program code for calculating a new content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near by each other on said portal pages; and

program code for offering new pages with said new content structure.

20. A computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave, said computer data signal having program code stored thereon for arranging portlets in a Web Portal comprising a hierarchical structure of portal pages and portlets, wherein said program code comprises:

program code for retrieving data mining input data relating to said portlets;

program code for performing a data mining function on said data mining input data, resulting in a data mining result revealing respective similarities between said portlets;

program code for calculating a new content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near by each other on said portal pages; and

program code for offering new pages with said new content structure.

21. A portal server computer system for arranging portlets in a Web Portal comprising a hierarchical structure of portal pages and portlets, wherein said program code, said system comprising:

means for retrieving data mining input data relating to said portlets;

means for performing a data mining function on said data mining input data, resulting in a data mining result revealing respective similarities between said portlets;

means for calculating a new content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near by each other on said portal pages; and

means for offering new pages with said new content structure.