What is an Intranet? LIS2176. Intranets: The technical view. Characteristics of the Internet. two views of this question:

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1 What is an Intranet? LIS2176 two views of this question: technical functional Intranets and Portals: an overview Intranets: The technical view easier to define, less of a moving target an internal network that uses the same technical infrastructure & applications as the Internet, without necessarily being attached to the Internet the Internet writ small Characteristics of the Internet Client/server architecture based on common, standardized protocols independent of platform independent of any individual software developer But see: Java vs ActiveX, Dynamic HTML 1

2 Protocols and applications collection of protocols and applications designed for the Internet, including: UDP & TCP/IP, the phonemes of the Internet http, ftp, gopher, nntp, telnet, smtp etc: the languages of the Internet related technologies such as HTML applications built on top of protocols: WWW, ftp, remote login, newsgroups/discussion groups, electronic mail Protocols and applications cont d often originates from individual work, but may eventually become cross-industry standard current application set doesn t limit definition of Internet/Intranets future developments (standard or custom) will still be TCP/IP- or UDP-based (for a while) usually accessible from within a browser client/server in nature Intranets: The functional view collection of hardware, software, infrastructure, information resources and work practices that taken together provide some or all of the following functionality: information repository information exchange intra-office communication collaborative work environments and tools specialized application support Information repository a platform for the dissemination of a wide range of corporate documents and information: up-to-date reports, information from corporate databases, project information, minutes, price lists etc reference materials: manuals, company procedures and policies, training manuals, newsletters and announcements etc archival material 2

3 Information repository cont d a good repository will contain: up-to-date and timely information sophisticated methods for search and retrieval user can focus on only the information they need avoids extensive printing of costly materials that are seldom used and soon out of date Information exchange the Internet is increasingly becoming viewed as a good medium for exchange of information between businesses requires a highly secure environment and agreement on the protocols of exchange XML is becoming the common grammar of data exchange on the Internet Information exchange cont d in an Intranet context, allows different parts of an organization, with differently structured stores of information, to develop a common language of data exchange so that information can be more easily shared Intra-office communication supports many types of communication: bulletin boards one-to-one ( , chat) many-to-many (discussion groups, voice and video conferencing) individual and group scheduling resource booking 3

4 Intra-office communication cont d at many workplaces, is still the only mission-critical application scheduling, others becoming more popular voice and video conferencing resources are slowly maturing intranets are particularly good candidates for these technologies, where the hardware, software and bandwidth can be tightly controlled Intra-office communication cont d Intranet communications technology starting to merge with traditional voice technology: Internet telephony allows inexpensive longdistance between corporate sites universal inboxes collect all messages in one place: , faxes, voic , bulletin board notices, etc Collaborative work Intranets can support traditional groupware functions such as: shared project directories to collect all relevant materials for in a single place accessible to anyone who needs them collaborative authoring or design environments document management system for version control and annotation Collaborative work cont d search and retrieval capabilities for document repositories messaging, discussion groups, online conferencing environments (chat, whiteboards, shared editing tools) group scheduling & resource booking workflow control tools fine-grained control of access to all components of corporate information 4

5 Customized applications many software tools now available to support application development in an Intranet environment browser-based client software needs minimal, or can be downloaded/upgraded automatically via the Intranet extend the Intranet to more traditional areas of corporate computing Customized applications cont d make corporate forms easy to access (and easy to update) bring together multiple applications under a single interface, eg searching multiple corporate databases at once create universally-accessible, user-friendly, browser-based interfaces to legacy applications Beyond (and behind) the desktop Internet/Intranet often seen as screen-based information/interaction resource printers extend its possibilities: just-in-time publishing system, report distribution system, etc downloading allows it to be a data-distribution mechanism for other kinds of applications network staff can use it to install, maintain and upgrade client workstation software Beyond the organization: Extranets Extranets extend the concept and functionality of an Intranet beyond the corporation to its: clients: support, payment, delivery suppliers: orders, payments potential clients: advertising, information partners 5

6 Why might you need an Intranet? to tame multiple client interfaces to inhouse applications, give them one look-and-feel to publish important but transient or quickchanging data to enable fast, timely delivery of reports to remote sites to give access to archived material Why might you need an Intranet? to provide access to large repositories of information (manuals, help files, corporate documents and policies, etc) without having to publish in paper to establish virtual workgroups, not necessarily permanent, nor in the same physical space Why might you need an Intranet? to facilitate keeping corporate desktops upto-date with the software they need to support online training to distribute corporate forms to provide easy-to-use interfaces for reluctant workers (high-level management) What do portals do? portal software pulls together many existing technologies in an attempt to create a single interface to the organization s knowledge and processes that is: easy to use complete and up-to-date customizable and personalizable bi-directional 6

7 Portals: A definition a web-functional, full-featured knowledge management and workflow tool for corporate intranets * web-functional... all the functionality in a portal can be accessed from a single piece of software, the browser much of it from a single screen web interfaces replace custom interfaces accessible (firewalls etc permitting) anywhere that the Internet goes * from the Traffick FAQ for portals: full-featured... incorporates as much functionality as possible, to bring everything together into one place: online information and transactional applications new online applications to replace other technologies (eg voic ) enables different applications to easily communicate with each other... knowledge management... emphasis on knowledge, not just information make it easy for users to find what they want, rather than having to search provide some level of assurance that what they have found is up-to-date reliable 7

8 ...and workflow tool... portals become the user s new desktop not only a place where they retrieve information (or knowledge), but also where they process it what I do at my portal will have immediate ramifications on someone else s ( or notice to be read, letter to be edited or approved, invoice to be processed ) Customization the contents of a corporate portal can be customized at the user s desktop for: department job function internal or external location of client computer not under the user s control Personalization users change the design of their portal look-and-feel issues (layout, colours) determine categories of data to appear subscribe to reports news channels monitor resources for changes (eg a webpage, a stock quote...) Vertical portals (vortals) address the needs of particular industries or organizational functions pharmaceuticals (SAS) or of organizational functions sales and marketing (Glyphica InfoPortal) human resources project management and resource sharing for consulting companies (Portera ServicePort: includes hosted service) 8

9 Architecture Intranets can be unconnected to the Internet, but support remote access or multiple sites via private lines connected to the Internet for lookup, , but via private lines for remote access, multiple sites connected to the Internet for all remote and multisite access connect to the Internet for remote access, multsite and external access Scenario 1: Isolated Intranet no permanent connections to the Internet support for multiple corporate sites through private telecommunications lines support for remote access via locally administered dialup facilities no security issues associated with connection to the public Internet Remote access All remote access via dialup facilities located at one or more of the corporate sites. Isolated Intranet Site 1 Sites interconnected via private telecommunications lines Site 2 Site 3 etc Scenario 2: Isolated Intranet with Internet access for lookup, same configuration as previous example, but offers users access to Internet as well as Intranet, for purposes of resource access, global , etc requires one or more firewalls to protect the Intranet sites wherever they connect to the Internet 9

10 Remote access All remote access via dialup facilities located at one or more of the corporate sites. Isolated Intranet with Internet access The Internet Site 1 Firewalls Sites interconnected via private telecommunications lines Site 2 etc Scenario 3: Using the Internet as an Intranet Internet provides interconnectivity for multiple sites, remote access sites must still be protected by firewalls may want to develop encryption and signature standards to guarantee privacy as data travels through the Internet called Virtual Private Networks Using the Internet as an Intranet Remote access Site 1 The Internet Site 2 etc Scenario 4: creating an Extranet capitalizes on use of Internet as the interconnecting network can selectively add access for users external to the corportation: partner companies clients & suppliers potential customers (advertising) 10

11 Using the Internet as an Extranet Remote access Site 1 The Internet Site 2 etc Selected external access HTML and its shortcomings little flexiblity across media (computer screen, tv screen, printer, handheld device) presentation markup ignores content of document once a page reaches the user s screen, it is largely static Beyond HTML moving beyond HTML with a number of technologies: scripting languages data-driven websites Cascading Style Sheets XML, XSL, XSLT etc developers must keep a watch on many fronts Cascading Stylesheets (CSS): Styling objects allow designer to specify styles for individual objects or sets of objects <STYLE> H1 {color: red; font-size: 24pt } </STYLE> style overrides default browser style for the object type 11

12 CSS (cont d) can easily change the look of all similar objects in a page... <STYLE> I { color: yellow } </STYLE> or of particular ones: CSS (cont d) <STYLE> H2 I { color: yellow } </STYLE> CSS (cont d) style sheet can be included within the HTML document itself, or stored in a separate file separate file allows many different web documents to share the same style sheet allows for easy upgrading of group of documents by changing one style sheet helps to standardize a look across an Intranet CSS (cont d) quickly becoming an important standard for the Internet look of a document can be easily changed: for small screens for visually-impaired users for WebTV etc etc 12

13 Extensible Markup Language (XML) move beyond HTML (presentation) markup to structural or content markup transmit not only data and how it should look on user s screen, but what it is a platform-independent way of transmitting data to client-side programs restrictive subset of SGML standard: still powerful enough to be useful, but considerably easier for developers to support XML for data storage many subject-specific schemes being developed for marking up and storing data many examples in metadata arena RDF Dublin Core most useful for giving some structure to otherwise unstructured data XML for data exchange machine-to-machine transmission of data in platform- and application-independent format can be used for customized purposes between two users/organizations many, many standards being developed for inter-organization communication eg: XML/EDI may fulfill the promise of EDI XML for data display sophisticated delivery and display of data allow multiple views of the same data allow on-the-fly change of views of data (eg drill-down capability) allow on-the-fly change of contents (eg adjust all figures to local currency) adapt to different display environments 13

14 XML, CSS, XSL XML data can be styled for screen presentation using CSS XSL (XML Styling Language) offers the ability to transform as well as style language reorder data transform data elements hide or unhide etc Status of XML on the desktop endorsed first by Microsoft Netscape has now agreed to support some level of support in both version 5 browsers Office 2000 suite professes to use XML as a standard storage format, but not really XML and portals common format for metadata and resources eases cooperation between different portal components TRANSFORM data for movement between different applications enables aggregation of data sources EXTRACT data from underlying databases and applications into a common format for simplified, unified portal access 14