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Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
Again, I separate the portal's perspective from the portlet's perspective -- (for
the time being assuming the producer manages its own customization data). From
the Portal's perspective the portlet instance is the element in its persistent
structure that maps logically to an entity represented by the portal service which
in conjunction with other information (the current user) can be joined into a key
that identifies a particular set of state (user customizations, etc) that
act/constrain the behavior/output of the service to present the proper effect.
Your use of portlet instance seems to come from the portlet point of view -- a
persistent representation of a users stock portfolio -- I am not (yet) trying to
have us define terms at the WSRP model level. My portlet instance is more like
the Portal's knowledge that your "portlet view" can exist. From this perspective
one thing a portal does to an portlet instance is to "view" it.
-Mike-
Thomas Schaeck wrote:
> I think the question is just whether with "portlet instance" you mean the a
> persistent entity that is displayed by "portlet view" or "active portlet
> instance" as Gil proposed
>
> or whether with "portlet instance" you mean the portlet view and you use
> another word for the persistent entity.
>
> In the first case, this would be an example:
>
> A portlet instance exists as a persistent entity in the database. In the
> case of a stocks portlet, it may contain a list of stock symbols of
> interest for a user.
> The portlet instance exists across requests and even when the user logs out
> from the portal.
> The "portlet view" or "active portlet instance" only exist when a page is
> being viewed.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Thomas
>
> Eilon Reshef <eilon.reshef@webcollage.com> on 04/15/2002 10:09:17 PM
>
> Please respond to Eilon Reshef <eilon.reshef@webcollage.com>
>
> To: "'Michael Freedman'" <Michael.Freedman@oracle.com>
> cc: "'Gil Tayar'" <Gil.Tayar@webcollage.com>, "'Sasha Aickin'"
> <AlexanderA@plumtree.com>, wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
>
> Makes sense. My only personal confusion: what would be a concrete scenario
> where - to Gil's first question - no user is seeing a portal page and yet
> a portlet instance exists?
>
> Eilon
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 3:21 PM
> To: Eilon Reshef
> Cc: 'Gil Tayar'; 'Sasha Aickin'; wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
>
> I wonder if some of the confusion comes from point-of-view. The terms I
> have set out to define are defined from the perspective of the portal. At
> this point there are no assumptions or terms defined from the perspective
> of the portlet. I.e. I have been attempting to define how a portal
> interacts with a portlet through the lifecycle of a bound service without
> discussing how this service models the behaviors. For example -- from a
> portal perspective a portlet instance is element in the portal the
> structure -- its likely that from a portlet modeling perspective the API
> will represent the portals operations on the instance as a runtime (only)
> thing. I.e. in the end the portal talks to a portlet service for all
> operations (there aren't multiple objects/services). Operations are
> defined not only by the method of the service itself but by the (form of)
> data passed to the method.
>
> As for whether we should define/discuss the design time -- First my goal
> was to capture the portals perspective so we could discuss what WSRP should
> concern itself with. In our concall last week, including portlet
> templates (design-time) was discussed. A number of portal vendors
> indicated they will need to define this behavior anyway -- and would prefer
> a standard for it. We decided however to tackle the portlet instance case
> first as it seemed more basic -- and once this level of the API was in good
> shape to come back and look at portlet templates.
>
> -Mike-
>
> Eilon Reshef wrote: See my answers below. As Thomas noted, I think it's
> mainly a terminology question, but I think it's important that eventually
> we all sync up.My line of thought is that design-time is a pretty complex
> thing, that we may or may not need to standardize, and there's a
> portal-specific or portlet-specific workflow that results in possibly
> portlet templates, all of which are persistent (so there could be an
> administrator portlet template, then a superuser portlet template, then a
> portlet for an individual user).Whenever an individual views the page,
> then a portlet instance is created, to generate the view.Eilon
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gil Tayar [mailto:Gil.Tayar@webcollage.com]
> Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2002 2:11 AM
> To: 'Sasha Aickin'; Michael Freedman
> Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
>
> Mike,The definition for portlet instance as a "a portlet in the portal
> layout structure" is still confusing. Let me ask a question which will
> maybe make things clearer between us - if no user is seeing a portal page,
> does a portlet instance exist?If the answer is yes, then a portlet
> instance is not (only?) a runtime manifestation. Moreover, we do not have
> a name for the runtime manifestation, and I feel we should.If the answer
> is no, then what is the word for the design time manifestation? Is it the
> "portlet template"?My feeling is that there should be concensus on the
> answer to this question, so that we will be on common ground on this very
> important term - portlet instance.So, let me re-ask the question (and I
> would really appreciate if all WSRP members could answer), and make them
> more answerable : 1. If no user is seeing no portal page at a certain
> point in time, does a portlet instance exist at that time?Answers:( ) Yes
> ( X ) No The portlet instance is a run-time object only. ( ) Other:
> ____________________________________________________________________2. If a
> user is seeing a portal page at a certain point in time, is it the portlet
> instance which is rendering the portlet?Answers:( X ) Yes Yes, the
> portlet instance generates the markup in run-time ( ) No( ) Other:
> ____________________________________________________________________Cheers,Gil
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sasha Aickin [mailto:AlexanderA@plumtree.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 07:10
> To: Michael Freedman; Gil Tayar
> Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
>
> Mike,I'd like to offer a slight clarification, if I could: I think that
> WSRP/portlets care about a clone only if the service maintains its
> personalization data AND the portlet service has to maintain information
> about each portlet instance on each page. I feel like, as I think Yossi
> said earlier, that the portal could implement clone by simply including
> the same instance on two pages. That way, WSRP would not need to know
> about cloning even if the portlet service maintained personalization
> data.Cheers,Sasha.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 2:24 PM
> To: Gil Tayar
> Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
>
> I believe that is how we have defined things:
> portlet instance: a portlet on a page; or more generically a portlet
> in the portal layout structure. From a portal's perspective, the portlet
> instance is the realization of the portlet in the runtime layout
> structure. A portlet instance is derived from a portlet template. e.g.
> when adding a portlet to a page, the user chooses a portlet template
> (from the toolbox). The template is used to "type" the instance being
> created.
>
> personalization data: a set of customized data settings for a portlet
> instance. There is an 1 to N relationship between personalization data and
> portlet instances. 1 set of personalizations may be shared between
> multiple instances.
>
> What is/was a little confusing was Yossi statement that "the same portlet
> instance appears in different places in the portal structure". That is
> not what I had indicated in my reply to him -- rather I said was
> "personalization [data] can be shared between multiple portlet instances
> of the same type." I.e. portlet instances ARE your runtime manifestations
> on a page. There is a special case where two of these happen to share the
> same personalization data. This tends to come into existence via some
> kind of clone operation. WSRP/portlets care about this in the situation
> the service maintains its personalization data.
>
> I hope this helps.
> -Mike-
>
> Gil Tayar wrote: I second #1, as I outlined in my previous email. I
> submit that what is confusing is the term "portlet instance". I would
> prefer "portlet instance data" or "portlet customization data" and leave
> "portlet instance" to the runtime manifestation on the page, e.g. only
> when the user views it.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tamari, Yossi [mailto:yossi.tamari@sapportals.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 11:28
> To: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
> Thanks for the answers, but I'm still not satisfied on 1 and 2...1. What
> bothers me here is that the fact the same portlet instance appears in
> different places in the portal structure is completely handled by the
> portal. The producer does not know/care where this instance is in the
> portal pages. Hence while the feature is logical in the portal framework,
> I don't see its relevance to WSRP.2. I see your point, I'm just worried
> about performance. We should give this some more thought. Maybe the
> metadata could either give a URL\title or say that it is dynamic.
> Yossi.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 12:06 AM
> To: Tamari, Yossi
> Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
> Good questions.
>
> 1. What I meant when I said that personalization data can be shared
> between multiple instances is that the personalization can be shared
> between multiple portlet instances of the same type. For example I can
> have two instances of a Stock portlet that share the same personalization
> data. In this case both instances display the same result. When either
> is customized, the changes are reflected in both as the personalization
> data is shared. This generalization allows a consumer to expose the same
> portlet (result) from different levels in its structure. Remember, a
> portlet instance is defined as a particular reference in the structure
> (portlet on a page). If you want the same content in two locations in
> the structure you need the function defined here. One use of this is in a
> portal that supports access from multiple devices. One can envision the
> need to allow portal designers/users to maintain different portal
> structures between the device (types). However, in such a world the end
> user still wants access to the same content. Cloning is an operation
> that can be used create a second portlet instance with the characteristics
> that its personalization data is shared. So a cloned instance is one that
> has the characteristics described above.
>
> 2. Yes, requesting a portlet instance to render a link reference to
> itself does mean you ask the portlet to render an URL that returns its
> content as markup. I agree that this operation can often be defined by
> meta-data. However it may not always be static. In both this case and
> the case we need to render a title bar for the portlet we must allow a
> way for the portal (consumer) to acquire the portlet's (producers) title.
> This is because the title is commonly personalizable -- hence dynamic.
> Further discussions will resolve whether this occurs during a render
> operation (get "Link") or is merely a getTitle API that returns a string.
> Done in the former the portlet gets an opportunity to define/override the
> standard getContent URL -- hence I included it in the list.
>
> 3. Whether changes to a portlet template's settings should affect
> existing instances is a good question. We should discuss this in the next
> phase. I will add it to the questions list in this area. I will also
> remove the statement from the document (so it can be added once
> answered). I agree there are basic configuration settings that should be
> propagated. An example would be a news feed portlet that requires the URL
> of the source be entered to wire the portlet to a particular news feed.
> If this URL changes there needs to be a way for the update to alter
> existing instances. On the flip side, one can also envision some
> template settings being the initial personalization for an end user. Its
> not as clear if these values should be propogated particularly if there is
> support for > 1 level of personalization in the instance.
>
> Hope this helps.
> -Mike-
>
> "Tamari, Yossi" wrote: Hi Mike,I need some clarifications:1.
> personalization data - What does it mean that it can be shared between
> multiple instances? do you mean instances of the same portlet? if so, why
> is that a different instances, i.e. why should the consumer request the
> exact same data twice? And how is that different from a cloned
> instance?2. "You can request a portlet instance render a link reference to
> itself" - Does that mean you ask the portlet for a URL that returns its
> content as markup? I think this should be part of the meta-data, as it
> does not need to be truly dynamic.3. Why should changes to the portlet
> template's settings not affect existing instances? If the name of my
> company was change, I want the new name rendered in ALL the instances.
> Yossi.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 9:53 PM
> To: WSRP
> Subject: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
> I have attached a short document describing a portal's possible usage
> pattern for portlets using the terms we discussed last week. Please
> comment/annotate with new operations or suggested operations to remove.
> Please don't annotate with questions intended to clarify the behavior of
> the operation, send these separately. The goal for this Thursday's meeting
> is to see if we can agree on a preliminary usage pattern and collection
> of operations. Hopefully we can then move into enumerating the questions
> we need to answer. In our discussion on Thursday, I expect we will need
> to classify at least the operational aspects of the usage scenario along
> two axes:
>
> Axis 1: Is this a valid Portal operation?
>
> Yes, we all agree this a valid operation
> No, we all agree this is not a valid operation
> Maybe, there is debate whether this is a valid operation.
> Don't know, we need more information and discussion to understand the
> operation before classifying it.
>
> Axis 2: Should this operation be covered/enabled by our spec?
>
> Yes, we all agree.
> Yes, but it should be addressed in a later revision.
> No, we all agree.
> Maybe, there is debate whether we should address this.
> Don't know, we need more information to decide.
>
> It might be useful if each of you did your own classification (assuming of
> course the usage scenario isn't grossly controversial).
>
> -Mike-
>
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