For a long time now I have been hearing the word portal and have actually used a few of them. I managed to install a few portals which are based on PHP and a few Java portals too. I hadn't made the effort to delve deeper into the architecture of the portals but now I am finding myself having to do so. I have decided to go with Java. The main reason is because I want to use the portal for business intelligence purposes, i.e. I want to include a number of reporting applications in the portal. Most of the web based reporting tools I found are java based and hence the decision to go with Java.

Some of the portals I am looking at right now include:

• JBoss Portal
• Jetspeed
• Liferay

Haven't made too much progress yet and would welcome any suggestions and experiences with the named portals or other products.