Hello all,

I am a Drupal fan and working on Drupal from past 6 months , Now we have got a good project (Portal) and i suggested Drupal but my partners are suggesting Liferay .

If any one has the idea, can discuss...

Comments

chx’s picture

First of all, Liferay is a Java based solution. Few here will have experience with that. What we can help you with IF you provide details is a description of how Drupal will fit your needs.

http://indicthreads.com/content/view/161/1/ this can be an interesting read.
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Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

chiggsy’s picture

We could get into a whole bunch of factors concering this issue, but the bottom line is that PHP programmers are cheaper and easier to find than java programmers. So if you go with liferay to maintain it you'll eventually need to pay java programmers. With drupal , you'll pay PHP programmers. You'll pay more for the java people, regardless of the merits of either language , speed, smell , whatever. It's not a a political or philosophical decision, it's an economic one. Plus you know drupal already, so you could start today. That's why I'd go with drupal in your situation.

Julien PHAM’s picture

And I should add many people do not like java and turn java off in their browser.

Java needs an add-on to browsers... php needs not...

So I think with a php CMS you'll reach more people than with a java one...

As for myself I do not like java based websites...

gollyg’s picture

Important not to confuse client side java with server side java. It is true that java applets have had there day and are no longer a useful solution in day to day web design (though there are still valid uses for it).

However a CMS built in Java still serves up plain old (x)html - the technology on the backend is invisible to the client (except possibly a page extension of .jsp, which can be easily overridden).

gollyg’s picture

damn resubmit!

sashidar’s picture

Hi ,

Thanks for your suggestion , But i'm a java programmer also and having a team of 6 java experts. My site requirements are

Some items that will require extra thought and research on how we will achieved the desired functionality are:

1. Domain Specific Search -- One search that searches all internal databases and internet sites with a constraint on specific Internet websites. I sent a link with a possible candidate -- Swish-e -- an open source search engine that will create its own index of internet sites via its own spider that we can have index just the sites we want to include in the search (we are the search engine at that point).

2. Single Sign-on functionality -- Need to determine what commonalities are available to enable single sign-on to USPCE (may not be necessary), PIG, NPB eLearning courses/LMS, and PIGMap.

3. Customized Home Page via Individual Preferences -- These will affect the audience landing pages and what content items will be displayed. We need to define exactly what these options are that can be chosen to add, delete or modify the view of these content items. Is this easily accommodated via Drupal's core functionality?

4. One Individual -- Multiple Roles -- How do we handle one person that is, for example, a consultant AND a domain editor -- what audience landing page does this default to?

5. For Allied Industries, "Business Card" Annotations -- Need firm plan on how to handle adding the Allied Industry's individual business contact information to the bottom of the PIG Content item being printed (intent is to allow customization of this content so a consultant or other outreach type person gets "credit" for providing this information to an end user and that the consultant returns often to interact with PIG because of this feature). My intiial approach is to have a special printable view for users with this account type -- this would work fine for textual content items being pulled from our databases, but adding this to PDF views is a challenge and is where we need to brainstorm a possible solution.

6. Top 10 FAQ by Demographic -- Need to brainstorm what to source this on from user account demographics (state, user type, etc.) and what FAQs (by keyword, by topic, etc.) we will display -- These are targeted to be displayed within the Audience Landing Pages and should be an item we allow to be customized.

7. Polls by different Audience Landing Pages -- Need to confirm Drupal will allow for this functionality to put a different poll on each Audience Landing Page if desired.

8. Workflow for responses to PigFAQ requests -- Need to brainstorm exactly how to handle the passing of a request from Call Center to USPCE to Domain Editors to Advisory Board (specifically what screens this is communicated to these groups of users) -- also, potential to assign a specific individual to answer a question and generate an e-mail to that person asking them to work on that request. Call center updates to WorldTrak are a part of this as well with an initial request from the user needing to be logged in WorldTrak. A reminder for users that have requested to be contacted via voice will also need to have a way to alert the Call Center to call the requestor when an answer is received.

9. User Feedback -- rating of 1 to 7 on certain content pages -- Need to brainstorm exactly how we will capture these ratings and allow for easy reporting by the executive user group.

10. Cross-Reporting/Updating between PIG and WorldTrak -- Confirm strategy for updating PIG if the Call Center enters new information in WorldTrak concerning a user and vice versa.

11. Validation UI for automated registration -- Confirm strategy for verification, error handling, and exception handling with Call Center users, including workflow queue to handle incoming registration requests.

Please give me information which are not possible with Drupal.As it is a big project.

sashidar’s picture

Me to dont like java CMS , But if something is not possible with Drupal that can be done with Java CMS(Like Liferay) , i have to choose that.

What do say?

robertDouglass’s picture

There is nothing wrong with building web applications in Java. If the team of 6 programmers are Java experts, what benefit is there to making them learn a new language/architecture?

Furthermore, there are close to zero cases where you can truthfully say "Java can do this and PHP can't" or the other way around. This decision is not about whether or not these features can be done, because you can build them all in Java or in PHP, but rather, what is the cheapest and easiest solution?

In this decision, Drupal has to be evaluated as a programming framework. It is a very good programming framework; easy to learn, specialized for web applications, and very efficient at reusing code and libraries. But that still doesn't mean that it is naturally the right decision for a shop with six Java programmers sitting around.

(disclaimer: I quit two jobs as a Struts programmer in order to work on Drupal full-time)

- Robert Douglass

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My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress

jadwigo’s picture

1. Domain Specific Search -- One search that searches all internal databases and internet sites with a constraint on specific Internet websites. I sent a link with a possible candidate -- Swish-e -- an open source search engine that will create its own index of internet sites via its own spider that we can have index just the sites we want to include in the search (we are the search engine at that point).

> as you said: an external search engine like swish-e will be better suited than the drupal engine

2. Single Sign-on functionality -- Need to determine what commonalities are available to enable single sign-on to USPCE (may not be necessary), PIG, NPB eLearning courses/LMS, and PIGMap.

> you'd need to build this yourself, but drupal already has something similar which you could extend, if XML-RPC is possible in the other systems..

3. Customized Home Page via Individual Preferences -- These will affect the audience landing pages and what content items will be displayed. We need to define exactly what these options are that can be chosen to add, delete or modify the view of these content items. Is this easily accommodated via Drupal's core functionality?

> probably as a combination of workspace.module and personalized blocks, maybe also privatemessage and buddylist.

4. One Individual -- Multiple Roles -- How do we handle one person that is, for example, a consultant AND a domain editor -- what audience landing page does this default to?

> audience is a concept that's not yet in drupal, but you might look into organic groups which might help you on the way.
(in my experience organic groups does not play well with customized node/taxonomy access modules yet)

5. For Allied Industries, "Business Card" Annotations -- Need firm plan on how to handle adding the Allied Industry's individual business contact information to the bottom of the PIG Content item being printed (intent is to allow customization of this content so a consultant or other outreach type person gets "credit" for providing this information to an end user and that the consultant returns often to interact with PIG because of this feature). My intiial approach is to have a special printable view for users with this account type -- this would work fine for textual content items being pulled from our databases, but adding this to PDF views is a challenge and is where we need to brainstorm a possible solution.

> I'm not sure I get this point, but it sounds like it's not yet available, so you's need to build this too

6. Top 10 FAQ by Demographic -- Need to brainstorm what to source this on from user account demographics (state, user type, etc.) and what FAQs (by keyword, by topic, etc.) we will display -- These are targeted to be displayed within the Audience Landing Pages and should be an item we allow to be customized.

> most popular content in a taxonomy -> use taxonomy for demographics. should be easy

7. Polls by different Audience Landing Pages -- Need to confirm Drupal will allow for this functionality to put a different poll on each Audience Landing Page if desired.

> organic groups with custom polls

8. Workflow for responses to PigFAQ requests -- Need to brainstorm exactly how to handle the passing of a request from Call Center to USPCE to Domain Editors to Advisory Board (specifically what screens this is communicated to these groups of users) -- also, potential to assign a specific individual to answer a question and generate an e-mail to that person asking them to work on that request. Call center updates to WorldTrak are a part of this as well with an initial request from the user needing to be logged in WorldTrak. A reminder for users that have requested to be contacted via voice will also need to have a way to alert the Call Center to call the requestor when an answer is received.

> will be doable with workflow,actions, taxonomy and probably a queue module

9. User Feedback -- rating of 1 to 7 on certain content pages -- Need to brainstorm exactly how we will capture these ratings and allow for easy reporting by the executive user group.

> simplevote + votingapi

10. Cross-Reporting/Updating between PIG and WorldTrak -- Confirm strategy for updating PIG if the Call Center enters new information in WorldTrak concerning a user and vice versa.

> what is WorldTrak and what is PIG? .. sorry, I'm unable to help on this one.

11. Validation UI for automated registration -- Confirm strategy for verification, error handling, and exception handling with Call Center users, including workflow queue to handle incoming registration requests.

> Depends on how you want to validate.. profile.module and legal.module have some validation, and profile module is very exstensible..

On the whole it's a lot of customization and development.
My guess is that the amount of work is probably very similar if you choose either system. (but I have no experience with liferay, so you'll have to use your own experience here)

HTH

robertDouglass’s picture

Hot off the presses: a module that uses OpenID for single sign in:

http://www.openidenabled.com/resources/downloads/php-openid/openid.module

- Robert Douglass

-----
My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress

robertDouglass’s picture

Drupal will provide you with tools that will lighten the load of programming any of these, but the majority of your requests have no 1:1 counterpart in Drupal, meaning you will need to customise or do new programming at nearly every step. Chances are, this will be true with every CMS you look at, and you probably realise that. So the question is, where are the strengths of your current team?

If you do end up doing this project with Drupal (which is a very good tool to program with, and would be well suited for your project), I would suggest working with a firm like http://Lullabot.com as a high-level consultant to help you make architectural decisions and ensure that you leverage Drupal in the best way. It will save you lots of time, money and problems, especially if you're relatively new to the Drupal architecture.

- Robert Douglass

-----
My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress

sashidar’s picture

Hey thanks all for addressing your ideas.

For The following issues i selected following...

1) Domain specific search --swish-e OR site-search-pro(www.site-search-pro.com)
(i feel site serch pro can be integrated vth Drupal(i tested vth test site, but any ideas about swish-e vth Drupal?)
2)Single Sign-On-- Haven't made decision.

3) Customized Home Page -- We can do it with Drupal.
4)One individual Multiple Roles-- We can Do easily with Drupal.

5) Top10 FAQ by demographic -- I'm Trying with location
module,or we can do it manually(by modifying Existing also).
6)Polls --poll module..
7)Userfeedback-- Im already using it.with another site(Drupal).
8) Cross Repoting-- I have to Know more Detials..

--- Any comments?

robertDouglass’s picture

sashidar’s picture

Hi,

For Domain-specific search --- I'm using site-search-pro (www.site-search-pro.com) it is ok.But most of the users suggesting swish-e.

Any ideas on swish-e with Drupal?

kf6zql’s picture

Here is a fairly involved answer for the Liferay side of things.

1. Domain Specific Search -- One search that searches all internal databases and internet sites with a constraint on specific Internet websites. I sent a link with a possible candidate -- Swish-e -- an open source search engine that will create its own index of internet sites via its own spider that we can have index just the sites we want to include in the search (we are the search engine at that point).


Liferay uses Lucene to index your entire portal. This means that every article, upload, image, or anything else put on your site can be indexed and searched very easily.

2. Single Sign-on functionality -- Need to determine what commonalities are available to enable single sign-on to USPCE (may not be necessary), PIG, NPB eLearning courses/LMS, and PIGMap.


Liferay can be integrated with LDAP or any custom made sign on solution very easily, all you have to do is map the groups you have on your side to Liferay's groups.

3. Customized Home Page via Individual Preferences -- These will affect the audience landing pages and what content items will be displayed. We need to define exactly what these options are that can be chosen to add, delete or modify the view of these content items. Is this easily accommodated via Drupal's core functionality?

This is a default option in Liferay. Full customizeability, we aren't talking myspace here (although it can be restricted to be like that) but full 100% anything they want on their home page they can have it.... only limited by the site admin.

4. One Individual -- Multiple Roles -- How do we handle one person that is, for example, a consultant AND a domain editor -- what audience landing page does this default to?

Absolutely possible, ships with. Liferay has the idea of Organizations, Companies, Locations, Groups, and Roles and each user has a 1 to n relatiopnship.... a user can be a member of all or just a few of each or even none.

5. For Allied Industries, "Business Card" Annotations -- Need firm plan on how to handle adding the Allied Industry's individual business contact information to the bottom of the PIG Content item being printed (intent is to allow customization of this content so a consultant or other outreach type person gets "credit" for providing this information to an end user and that the consultant returns often to interact with PIG because of this feature). My intiial approach is to have a special printable view for users with this account type -- this would work fine for textual content items being pulled from our databases, but adding this to PDF views is a challenge and is where we need to brainstorm a possible solution.

If I'm understanding this correctly, you could modify the portlet that you are using (in this case I would recommend the message boards that come default in liferay) to display that info. You could also track that in your DB to be able to give consultants ratings if you wanted.

6. Top 10 FAQ by Demographic -- Need to brainstorm what to source this on from user account demographics (state, user type, etc.) and what FAQs (by keyword, by topic, etc.) we will display -- These are targeted to be displayed within the Audience Landing Pages and should be an item we allow to be customized.


This could be as easy as using Liferay's CMS system to display the articles you want based on location or what have you. We can also integrate with Alfresco for CMS if you want.

7. Polls by different Audience Landing Pages -- Need to confirm Drupal will allow for this functionality to put a different poll on each Audience Landing Page if desired.


Liferay can do this.

8. Workflow for responses to PigFAQ requests -- Need to brainstorm exactly how to handle the passing of a request from Call Center to USPCE to Domain Editors to Advisory Board (specifically what screens this is communicated to these groups of users) -- also, potential to assign a specific individual to answer a question and generate an e-mail to that person asking them to work on that request. Call center updates to WorldTrak are a part of this as well with an initial request from the user needing to be logged in WorldTrak. A reminder for users that have requested to be contacted via voice will also need to have a way to alert the Call Center to call the requestor when an answer is received.


Absolutely, you could integrate or DB (you can use mysql, oracle, postres, MSSQL, shoot... you could even use access if you wanted) and sync up the two db's to maintain information. As for the interface, building a call center portlet (widget, addon, whatever you want to call it) is just basic html.

9. User Feedback -- rating of 1 to 7 on certain content pages -- Need to brainstorm exactly how we will capture these ratings and allow for easy reporting by the executive user group.


Not a problem, build a feedback portlet and include it on each page. That way you can specify which pages you want it on and which you don't in jut a few minutes.

10. Cross-Reporting/Updating between PIG and WorldTrak -- Confirm strategy for updating PIG if the Call Center enters new information in WorldTrak concerning a user and vice versa.


Once again, it would be really easy to modify one of our classes to update both db's at the same time.

11. Validation UI for automated registration -- Confirm strategy for verification, error handling, and exception handling with Call Center users, including workflow queue to handle incoming registration requests.


Liferay uses a common java method to throw errors based on form input using try catch and throw. One java file and some html will get the done.

sashidar’s picture

Thanks for your clear explaination ,at last we selected Liferay , the one and only reason is MS SQL support.

AspRocket’s picture

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to let you know that Site Search Pro has mssql support too. Even more, they provide both php and asp editions. I use asp edition with mssql support and it works just fine. This script can index dynamic content generated with most of the databases (mysql, access, mssql and others).

housemd’s picture

Subscribing

rp1428’s picture

It may not be relevant but you might want to consider what hosting you will use. I run my Tomcat sites on a dedicated server whereas I'm comfortable putting Drupal sites on a shared server.

d4n1k’s picture

in Liferay and any other java server app, the java code runs on the server to generate the dynamic html...pretty the same as in drupal the php running in the server. So that, definitely, is not an advantage to drupal

msimanga’s picture

I think rp1428 was trying to say that hosting PHP on a shared server is much less risky than a Java application on a shared server. In terms of how they run, remember Java applications rely on .jar files for a good deal of their features. When changes are made to the jar file a refresh of the application is not as simple as refreshing a PHP file. Additionally costs of shared hosting for Java and PHP applications is very different with PHP being generally cheaper.

I don't think one is better than the other but I too will only run java applications when I have full access to the server and am able to restart it occasionally.

juancho_el_lobo’s picture

Well in Liferay you can create portlets with PHP, so you can use Java or PHP is up to you (however Liferay people favor the use of Java)