Sun Microsystems 2005Q1 manual Designing Portal Use Case Scenarios

Designing Portal Use Case Scenarios

•You can install Search on a machine separate from Portal Server, to keep the main server dedicated to portal activity. When you do so, you use the searchURL property of the Search provider to point to the second machine where Search is installed. The Search instance is a normal portal instance. You install the Search instance just as you do the portal instance, but use it just for Search functionality.

•The size of the Search database dictates whether more than one machine needs to host the Search database by replicating it across machines or building module. Consider using high-end disk arrays.

•Use a proxy server for caching the search hit results. When doing so, you need to disable the document level security. See the Portal Server 6 Administration Guide for more information on document level security.

Designing Portal Use Case Scenarios

Use case scenarios are written scenarios used to test and present the system’s capabilities and form an important part of your high-level design. Though you implement use case scenarios toward the end of the project, formulate them early on in the project, once you have established your requirements.

When available, use cases can provide valuable insight into how the system is to be tested. Use cases are beneficial in identifying how you need to design the user interface from a navigational perspective. When designing use cases, compare them to your requirements to get a thorough view of their completeness and how you are to interpret the test results.

Use cases provide a method for organizing your requirements. Instead of a bulleted list of requirements, you organize them in a way that tells a story of how someone can use the system. This provides for greater completeness and consistency, and also gives you a better understanding of the importance of a requirement from a user perspective.

Use cases help to identify and clarify the functional requirements of the portal. Use cases capture all the different ways a portal would be used, including the set of interactions between the user and the portal as well as the services, tasks, and functions the portal is required to perform.

A use case defines a goal-oriented set of interactions between external actors and the portal system. (Actors are parties outside the system that interact with the system, and can be a class of users, roles users can play, or other systems.)

Chapter 5 Creating Your Portal Design 99