Liferay Portal : How different from Websphere Portal

Question

I have worked with Websphere Portal 6.0,6.1 and developed portal applications usign JSR 168,JSR 286 Portlets.

Now I am moving to project where I will be working with Liferay portal server and JSR 168,JSR 286.

I know that as per programming interface (JSRs) It will be the same. But want to know what are the major difference at server level ( features,configuration,architecture, out-of-box services) when compared to Websphere Portal ?

Thanks

Answer 1

I agree the configuration will be different but I think it will help a lot the fact that you are prepared to think about the information architechture.

The main difference is that Liferay is not really that much prepared for escalability. It uses velocity so neither of the tags you use will help (Placeholders, component, element, etc).

It doesnt have that many portlets by default so you will have to develop a lot from the starter point.

Check this out for a really nice comparision (the slides are in spanish, and require the flash plug-in):

http://www.slideshare.net/mcimino/websphere-portal-vs-liferay-by-gartner-v10

Basically Liferay weaker points are in B2C and support. If you need to build a site that will rely heavily on personalization, you will have much work to do too.

Hope it helps

Answer 2

Liferay also supports JSR168 and JSR286 portlets, so in respect to that you can use the same API's as you are using in WebSphere Portal. The product itself cannot be easily compared to WPS as they both have different concepts. Liferay doesn't have a credential vault, for example, but it still supports SSO (NTLM or CAS). Your WebSphere Portal knowledge won't help you much in Liferay development, as it is a totally different product.