A portal includes one or more portal pages. Each portal page is associated with one or more ontology-based dictionaries. One or more portlets provide content for the portal pages, such that each portal page includes instances of one or more of the portlets. Each portal page is associated with the dictionaries and described using these dictionaries. Each portlet is associated with the ontology-based dictionaries and described using these dictionaries. A broker governs interaction among the portlets and between the portlets and the portal pages by using the ontology-based dictionaries. For instance, the broker governs interaction among the portlets, and between the portlets and the portal pages, by using the ontology-based dictionaries in that properties of the portlets and/or properties of the portal pages that are differently named but correspond to a same attribute are equated as identical via the ontology-based dictionaries.