I tried for a while and restarted eclipse. It started working fine.

Then ‘google’ gave me an answer for this strange behaviour.
Eclipse toggles between different modes when you press “Alt + Shift”. Clicking on ‘Alt’+'Shift’ again, I was able to proceed typing using normal letters.

This is the RAD folder structure for an empty portlet. This is how a portlet is shown in ‘Enterprise Explorer’ window.

The navigator shows the exact folder structure on the file system.

Every portlet, (similar to Servlets)
1. gets intialilzed through init() method.
2. serves the requests through renderRequest() and processAction() methods
3. reliquishes the resources and ends its life through the destroy() method.

Whenever an action event is triggered in the portlet, the processAction() method is called.
This processAction() performs any task that should be executed for that event and passes the control to renderRequest() method. Only one portlet action is triggered each time.

The renderRequest() method is responsible for producing the markup that is based on the state and mode of the portlet.
The portlet sets the MIME type on the response and generates the markup either by directly writing to the output stream or by including a servlet or JSP that generates the markup.

Let us consider a portal that has three portlets, A,B and C. An action event can be triggered in any one of the three portlets. Let us say ‘A’ triggers an event.
The whole portal page is rendered.

Here is what happens.

1.processAction() of portlet A is invoked and executed.
2.Once processAction() of portlet A is completed, render process starts.The renderRequest() methods of each portlet is called.
3.The final portal page is rendered to the user.

Next: Simple portlet folder structure in RAD

Portlet Application
One or more related portlets packaged together. All portlets packaged together share the same context and resources.

Page
A page is a place holder for one or more portlets

Layout
This is the way portlets are arranged in a page. This basically defines the number of content areas in a page.
Each portal page is subdivided into one or more content areas. Each content area can contain one or more portlets.The portal administrator or a user who has authority to manage a page can control whether others who have authority to edit the page can move, edit or delete the content areas and the portlets on the page.

Themes
Themes represent the overall look and feel of the portal, including colors, images
and fonts.

Skins
Skin refers to the appearance an individual portlet. Each portlet can have its own skin.

State
The portlets can be in maximized,minimized or normal state. This is the state of the window in which the portlet output will be displayed.

Mode
For the current request, the task and the content the portlet generates is defined by the mode.
When the content is displayed to the user, the portlet is in view mode. In this mode, the portlet just renders the markup for the page.The edit mode gets input from the user and the Help mode is used to show a help screen. A portlet can also have other custom optional modes.

Next: Portlet Lifecycle

D:/IBM/Websphere is my installation directory
There are three folders in this directory – Appserver,PortalServer,wp_profile.
Under “installedApps\” folder of this profile, you will find many EAR files deployed.

The files in the wp_profile directory are writable, whereas the files in the PortalServer directory contains files that are private to the portal server. These are read only.

The folder “installedapps” under wp_profile contains the files we deploy using the managemnet console.
In this folder, there is another folder with the node name(rocky is my node). Under rocky, we can find “PA_Lesson_4.ear”, the Lesson_4 portlet we just deployed.

The important folders and their use is shown in the picture.

Next:
Websphere portal application termminology

Portlets can run in different modes. When the portlet is intially displayed to the user, it is in the view mode.
When the user enters some data, it is in edit mode.Each portlet can be displayed in different states – normal,minimized (where the title bar alone is displayed),maximized (where the portal takes the whole page replacing the view of other portlets.

In RAD using the Portal Project, we can create a simple portlet and deploy it.
Simple portlet using RAD.
This presentation demonstrates how to create a basic portlet and deploy it in WPS.

Next: WPS folder structure

3.Select Webspeher portal server 6.1 and define the server by entering the host name.
Click Next.

4.Enter the websphere settings.
Check the security enabled on this server, if there is any user name/password you have to provide to deploy the applications.
Then ‘Test Connection’.

5.If the connection is successful, a message is shown.
Click Next.

6.In the ‘Window–>show View’ menu, select the ‘Servers’ window.

This will list the portal server we just configured and its status.

Next: Creating a simple portlet using RAD

For certification, we have the following topics to learn.
Compile, packaging, and deploying portal artifacts using Rational Application Developer
Configuring Rational Application Developer for remote testing and debugging with WebSphere Portal
Create portlets in Rational Application Developer and WebSphere Portlet Factory
Creating Portal projects in Rational Application Developer

So I installed RAD. It takes around 3GB in my machine.
WPS 6.1 is also installed. This took another 3GB.
Both of them comfortably running in a 4GB Vista machine.
This is my dev environment.

How to run WPS 6.1?

Use cmd prompt and navigate to the \AppServer\bin directory.

Following shows the list of options for StartServer.bat
D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>startServer.bat
Usage: startServer [options]
options: -nowait
-quiet
-logfile
-replacelog
-trace
-script [] [-background]
-timeout
-statusport
-profileName
-recovery
-help

Run startServer.bat
D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>startServer.bat

D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>startServer.bat WebSphere_Portal -trace
ADMU0116I: Tool information is being logged in file
D:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\logs\WebSphere_Portal\startServer.log
ADMU0128I: Starting tool with the wp_profile profile
ADMU3100I: Reading configuration for server: WebSphere_Portal
ADMU3200I: Server launched. Waiting for initialization status.
ADMU3000I: Server WebSphere_Portal open for e-business; process id is 5836

How will I know that the server is running?

While installing, I had configured a host, rocky3, which listens to the default port of the WPS 10040.

Open a browser and use the following url.

http://:10040/wps/myportal

This will open a page, telling us the server is working.

How to stop the server?

Following shows the list of options for stopServer.bat

D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>stopServer.bat
Usage: stopServer [options]
options: -nowait
-quiet
-logfile
-replacelog
-trace
-timeout
-statusport
-conntype
-port
-username
-password
-profileName
-help

Run the stopServer.bat
D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>stopServer.bat WebSphere_Portal
ADMU0116I: Tool information is being logged in file
D:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\logs\WebSphere_Portal\stopServer.log
ADMU0128I: Starting tool with the wp_profile profile
ADMU3100I: Reading configuration for server: WebSphere_Portal
ADMU3201I: Server stop request issued. Waiting for stop status.
ADMU4000I: Server WebSphere_Portal stop completed.
D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>

Next: Configuring RAD with Websphere Portal

A portal is a web based application that –commonly- provides personalization, single
5 sign on, content aggregation from different sources and hosts the presentation layer of
Information Systems. Aggregation is the action of integrating content from different
sources within a web page. A portal may have sophisticated personalization features to
provide customized content to users. Portal pages may have different set of portlets
creating content for different users.

What is a Portlet?

A portlet is a Java technology based web component, managed by a portlet container, that
processes requests and generates dynamic content. Portlets are used by portals as
pluggable user interface components that provide a presentation layer to Information
Systems.

When I started learning about portal and portlets, all I know is, a portal would look something like igoogle.
igoogle allows us to have different applications on our home page.
Mine looks something like this.

I have added different applications like gmail,calendar,news,weather forecast, which i use frequently.
Portal lets me personalize my page.

This post is about my websphere portal server 6.1 learning experience.
What is new in WPS 6.1?

JSR 286 complaint.
First feature of JSR 286 is the portlet events, in which portlets trigger events which are relayed to interested portlets forming a publish subscribe communication model. The event phase of this Inter Portlet Communication does not allow any user interaction. WPS 6.1 extends this feature in which the information propagateed can be controlled by the user. This is called click-to-action. JSR 286 also permits complex java objects to be sent and receive as event payloads.

For more information:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0809_hepper/0809_hepper.html

Supports WSRP 2.0 (Web Services for Remote Portlets)

JSR 286 defined how local portlets interact with a Java-based portal; WSRP 2.0 defines how remote portlets interact with a portal that supports SOAP-based Web services.

Web 2.0 capabilities and client side agggregation

Desktop like experience is provided
Client side appregation populates only necessary parts of a web page. This results in faster rendering of the page and reduced server side processing.
Ref: http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

Livetext
Livetext provides a means of end user controlled data transfer between portlet components.
When the user clicks on a source element, the portal displays a context menu listing targets that match the selected source. When a menu item is selected, the portal invokes the corresponding target passing it the source data.
ref : http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpexpdoc/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wp.exp.doc_v6101/dev/w2_smtg_refrmt.html

WCM
Lotus Web Content Management software allows content to be
Authored, acquired (referenced in external systems) or both.
Managed through library services (versioning, workflow and so on).
Secured programmatically to help ensure proper access.
Deployed to various applications (stand-alone Web sites and portals).
Deployed to various environments (for example, development, staging and production).
Presented (rendered) appropriately to each user via multiple presentation templates and personalization.

Ref: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/lotus/lotusweb/workplace/LOW10771-USEN-01.pdf

Next: Install-setup-and-configuration-of-a-wps-6-1-developer-environment