System for automatic arrangement of portlets on portal pages according to semantical and functional relationship

• US 7,653,659 B2
• Filed: 09/12/2006
• Issued: 01/26/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines SA (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Arning, Andreas, Kussmaul, Timo
• Primary Examiner(s): Robinson; Greta L
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wilcox; James J
• Application Number:
  US11/531,251
• Publication Number:
  US 20070136329A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,232 Days
• Field of Search: None
• 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 computer-implemented method for arranging portlets in a Web Portal based on a hierarchical content 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, wherein said revealed similarities include at least one interaction factor reflecting an input/output dependence between said portlets, wherein the mining comprises expressing said revealed respective similarities between said portlets as distances between said portlets and clustering said portlets based on said distances into a plurality of resulting clusters such that related ones of said portlets are clustered together, and wherein inter-cluster distances are calculated based on computing distances between pairs of said portlets residing in different clusters;

calculating a new hierarchical content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new hierarchical content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near-by each other, wherein said new hierarchical content structure describes a hierarchy of Web pages within said Web portal and portlets contained within said Web pages, and wherein said new hierarchical content structure is stored in a portal database; and

offering new Web pages for said Web Portal based on said new hierarchical content structure such that ones of said portlets within the same one of said plurality of resulting clusters are contained within the same one of said new Web pages.

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, said administrator feedback indicating whether the offered new Web pages for said Web Portal are accepted as a base version for a new Web Portal version.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

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 the offered new Web pages for said Web Portal meet 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 offered new Web pages for said Web Portal depend on the size 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 of claim 8, further comprising:

computing said interaction factor (IFAC) between portlet A and portlet B based on the number of properties published by portlet B that portlet A can handle such that higher numbers of properties published by portlet B that portlet A can handle result in higher values for said interaction factor; and

computing a distance between portlet A and portlet B in said content structure based on said interaction factor such that said distance between portlet A and portlet B in said content structure is less for higher values of said interaction factor.

14. The method according to claim 1, further comprising receiving an administrator feedback including manually performed corrections on said offered new Web pages for said Web Portal.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step of calculating said new hierarchical 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 hierarchical 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 hierarchical content structure separately from an existing hierarchical content structure;

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

offering a user input control for selectively adapting the existing hierarchical content structure according to said modifications.

18. A system including at least one processor and a computer readable storage medium, said computer readable storage medium having program code stored thereon for arranging portlets in a Web Portal based on a hierarchical content structure of portal pages and portlets, said program code comprising:

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, wherein said revealed similarities include at least one interaction factor reflecting an input/output dependence between said portlets, wherein the mining comprises expressing said revealed respective similarities between said portlets as distances between said portlets and clustering said portlets based on said distances into a plurality of resulting clusters such that related ones of said portlets are clustered together, and wherein inter-cluster distances are calculated based on computing distances between pairs of said portlets residing in different clusters;

program code for calculating a new hierarchical content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new hierarchical content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near-by each other, wherein said new hierarchical content structure describes a hierarchy of Web pages within said Web portal and portlets contained within said Web pages, and wherein said new hierarchical content structure is stored in a portal database; and

program code for offering new Web pages for said Web Portal based on said new hierarchical content structure such that ones of said portlets within the same one of said plurality of resulting clusters are contained within the same one of said new Web pages.

19. A computer program product including a computer readable storage medium, said computer readable storage medium having program code stored thereon for arranging portlets in a Web Portal based on a hierarchical content structure of portal pages and portlets, said program code comprising:

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, wherein said revealed similarities include at least one interaction factor reflecting an input/output dependence between said portlets, wherein the mining comprises expressing said revealed respective similarities between said portlets as distances between said portlets and clustering said portlets based on said distances into a plurality of resulting clusters such that related ones of said portlets are clustered together, and wherein inter-cluster distances are calculated based on computing distances between pairs of said portlets residing in different clusters;

program code for calculating a new hierarchical content structure from said data mining result, wherein said new hierarchical content structure arranges semantically and functionally similar portlets near-by each other, wherein said new hierarchical content structure describes a hierarchy of Web sages within said Web portal and portlets contained within said Web pages, and wherein said new hierarchical content structure is stored in a portal database; and

program code for offering new Web pages for said Web Portal based on said new hierarchical content structure such that ones of said portlets within the same one of said plurality of resulting clusters are contained within the same one of said new Web pages.