internet commerce

This book presents practical portal design principles in a vendor independent manner, emphasizing business process, ease of use, and deep integration of applications. Deploying a portal so "users check their email from the web or read the latest company press release" is not enough! The common goal is enterprise wide integration. The chapter on Return of Investment (ROI) presents how to make the ROI calculation and more importantly emphasizes business justification of the portal. This book uses a three-tier architecture of presentation, application server, and enterprise information service. The case studies presented and associated best practices were all useful but perhaps I would have enjoyed some examples of failures.. there must be a lot out there!

Data warehouse architecture is a huge topic (see for example books by Ralph Kimball), but this book introduces how portals can be delivery vehicle for "business intelligence" reporting (through ad hoc query tools, dashboards, and visualizations tools). Sullivan also discusses e-commerce portals, collaboration portals, and portals with unstructured and "tacit knowledge". He describes how metadata management can help in search for unstructured documents and applications. The final chapter on implementing your own portal is weak for planning purposes, but books like Moss and Arte "Business Intelligence Roadmap" offer more planning details.

To call this book "best practices" does the reader a disservice. The author's glossing over of Earned value (e.g., ROI) leaves the reader with an incomplete picture of how to compute these values. If this is your first/only source of information then when you try to give those numbers to your CFO, she will BURN you. Do yourself a favor and pick up another book on Earned Value and actually _learn_ how it is calculated, rather than relying on the poor presentation here.

Another juicy tip you're dying to find out: "Most portals have three-part layout" Oh really? Try again, Timmy.

Proven Portals gives a practical and balanced view of the subject matter. It should be required reading for those embarking on a Portal implementation or trying to rescue a failed one. The book provides concepts and best practices that are valid regardless of the technical infrastructure. You'll need greater detail in some areas for your implementation, and the author provides references for a more in-depth treatment of many issues. The book is an amazingly easy read for as much ground as it covers. I can't wait for Proven Data Warehouses!