Overview

Requirements

uPortal 2.6 requires JDK 1.5 or later. It may run under JDK 1.6 but support for JDK 1.6 is not a primary goal of the uPortal 2.6.0 initial release (instead focusing on getting JDK 1.5 support right.)

Release Notes

Hangups – Changes in 2.6 that might trip you up

• PersonDirs.xml is no longer parsed or honored by default. Use of PersonDirs.xml, which no longer ships as a file with uPortal as of 2.6, can be easily restored via configuration in personDirectory.xml.
• DLM is now the default layout manager. If you were relying on something else to be the default, you'll need to either migrate to using DLM (recommended and preferred) or be sure to point 2.6.1 at existing or otherwise suitable configuration instructing it to use the non-DLM layout management scheme you're looking to use. (DLM was one of the available layout management schemes in 2.5
• ALM is deprecated and will be removed from availability in a near future release*

2.6-export.1 - Detailed Release notes

Provides the uPortal 2.6 code base configured for exporting data into a format that can be imported by uPortal 3. This release cannot be used to run a uPortal instance.

2.6.1 - Detailed Release notes

Fixes in 2.6.1

• The initportal and deployPortletApp Ant targets function correctly without an internet connection.
• ALM cyclical reference handling.

Enhancements in 2.6.1

• Statistics are only logged instead of logged and written to System.out
• Unsafe HTML elements are now filtered by the CSynFeed channel.

2.6.0 - Detailed Release notes

Enhancements in 2.6.0 not present in any 2.5.x release

• Drag and Drop user preferences available for default theme. Jennifer Bourey took point on making this happen and continues to merge in improvements derived from user experience testing.
• DLM (Distributed Layout Management, donated by SunGard Higher Education) as default layout management approach. Mark Boyd has been generous with his time and expertise in making this happen.
• A modern, Div-centric, CSS-using, beautiful default DLM-compatible structure transform / theme transform / skin derived from the highly successful MyRutgers uPortal project. Jason Shao was key to this effort.
• A new approach to RSS and other syndicated feed reading in the channel, CSyndFeedReader. This adds support for additional syndication formats (e.g., Atom) and adds potential for more robust error handling in the Java layer. Courtesy of Brad Johnson.
• A new JSP Channel Type has been contributed by SunGard. JSP channels are a lightweight alternative to full JSR-168 portlets and a highly successful channel development strategy employed in SunGard's Luminis uPortal-based product.
• Standardization on JDK 1.5 and support for JDK 1.6, moving uPortal to a more performant, more featureful development and runtime environment. Cris Holdorph took initiative in smoothing JDK 1.6 compatibility wrinkles.
• Refactoring core channels away from IMultithreaded* interfaces for better debugging and performance (Brad Johnson did the heavy lifting on this work)
• A new channel for easy publication of SQL queries as lightweight channels (CSqlQuery)
• Upgrade to Xalan 2.7.0 for improved performance and stability across uPortal
• System cache scope support for CGenericXslt, allowing shared caches for shared content across users where appropriate, e.g. for a common list of institutional links.
• Many fixes and performance enhancements, some of which derived from Unicon's Academus product and merged in by Unicon. Nick Bolton has done a lot of the work on this.

Enhancements in 2.6.0 introduced since 2.5.0 that may also appear in 2-5-patches

• Critical security vulnerability fix for CWebProxy and CGenericXslt channels.
• DLM threadsafety under high load
• uPortal ships with necessary CAS integration libraries and commented-out example CAS configuration
• DENY permissions now have the expected effect via the AnyUnblockedGrantPermissionPolicy. (Dan Ellentuck was key to validating this fix, and Brad Szabo fixed a serious bug in the initial implementation of this feature)

Miscellaneous Notes

There was a presentation about uPortal 2.6 at the March 2005 Developers' meeting in LA.