What is the big picture regarding portals?

<b>1) What is the relationship between Dynpro and JSR 168? It looks like Dynpro is similar to 168 portals without roles and security.</b>

Web Dynpro and JSR 168 have no relationship. Web Dynpro is SAP's strategic UI technology on the Java and ABAP stack.

JSR168 is a portlet specification (http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/review/jsr168/)

<b>2) What is the relationship between EP 6 and JSR 168?</b>

JSR168 will be supported in the next release of NetWeaver and is not yet supported in NW04

<b>3) What is the relationship between Dynpro and EP6? You use Dynpro to create content, I know, and you use EP6 to create portals. But, it looks like you can create content in EP6 as well</b>.

No , Web Dynpro is used to create the UI.

EP - or Enterprise Portals is the component name within NetWeaver that describes the runtime environment for iViews.

One can create portal application by utilizing the specialized portalcomponent classes or extending the IService interface (for services). Or you can create a Web Dynpro application and run it as an iView in the portal. We deliver a bridge between the iView and Web Dynpro runtimes. A simple wizard allows you to generate an Portal iView that is based on your Web Dynpro app.

<b>4) We now have NW, and you can download EP6 and install it into NW. So, what happens to the EP PDK? Didn't people use this PDK to create portals etc.?</b>The PDK is a business package that you install into the portal. After the NW & portal install, you use SDM to deploy the PDK sda into the web application server.

It's still available and downloadable in SDN.

5<b>) Ok, one last question. This one a little tactical: How do you connect a portal iview to a Dynpro UI (project, component, whatever)?</b>You can use portal services in a Web Dynpro application or you can use a Web Dynpro application as the basis for an iView.

Great! Thank you for clearing all this up for me.