How Do They Support SOA?
A Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is simply an IT architectural style that allows applications to be built to support today's business needs of flexibility and integration. Flexibility enables a business to change and adapt. Integration emphasizes the communication and interaction of business processes from end-to-end, both internally and externally with customers and suppliers.
IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory is part of the IBM SOA Foundation and supports the "assemble phase" of the SOA life cycle. Developing a SOA application basically involves creating a service provider model and a service consumer model. Additional SOA features include disconnected support via stub service models, automatic service testing, simple service documentation, dynamic service mapping, and service interface support.
IBM WebSphere Portal is part of the IBM SOA Foundation and supports the "deploy phase" of the SOA life cycle. The deploy phase includes a combination of creating the hosting environment for your applications and actually deploying those applications. IBM WebSphere Portal is a hosting environment for the user interaction logic of your SOA application. IBM WebSphere Portal gives you the user interface to SOA. Additional SOA features include accessing Web services from portlets, Web services for remote portlet (WSRP), integrating business processes, and composite applications.
By connecting/integrating a company's resources including people, applications, business processes, and content, IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory and IBM WebSphere Portal build portals that provide complete interaction and collaboration services.