RE: [wsrp][wsia][wsrp-wsia joint interfaces][Draft Spec 0.43]createEntity/createTemplate/createPortlet

[Gil Tayar <Gil.Tayar@webcollage.com>]

In the interest of sanity and progress, I have broken up Rich's, Michael's, Monica's and Eilon's emails into four subjects - "Shared Transient Information", "Persistent Information Scope", "createEntity/createTemplate/createPortlet", "session and entity handles", and "Property lists".

 

This email will deal with createEntity/createTemplate/createPortlet, and the relevant quotes from the emails and my reply to them:

 

Rich wrote:

> Presuming the 2nd case to get dropped relative to the previous set of
> emails, I would propose this section call out how we will refer to these
> things throughout the remainder of the document/API. In particular, I would
> suggest:
>       Session Information - This is carried opaquely in the interface as a
>       "sessionID".
>       => goes away
>       Persistent Information - This is carried opaquely in the interface as
>       a "handle".

>

> Rather than "Manifestation", I would propose using "Entity" to describe the
> thing from which markup may be requested. I think it has the right level of
> opacity (Consumer has no idea what kind of entity it is) while carrying
> appropriate semantics (a thing that may be interacted with). Using these
> terms, there was also an open question at the end of our last call related
> to whether there were both persistent and transient entities ...

 >

> If we are going to support explicit lifecycle for both of these, I would
> propose:
>    handle   createEntity(handle, propertyValues)
>    sessionID   createSession(handle, propertyValues)

Michael wrote:

> 1) createEntity (aka createTemplate). In WSRP we have discussed requiring
> consumers register with a producer to "activate" it.  Registration returns an
> 'activation' handle used in subsequent calls to identify the consumer.  How can
> we account for this with the createEntity (and other) APIs?  I really, really,
> really, don't want this to be an property value.  Also what is the actual
> intent of these property lists?  Gil implies they are persistence presets.  If
> so should we have a separate list parameter that allow the consumer to further
> qualify the Entity being created?  I.e. in WSRP portlets aren't the direct
> producer -- they are managed/contained by the producer.  We will want to use
> the createEntity call to create/be tied to these subtypes -- hence need someway
> to qualify it in the call.  Finally, are we assuming the service never wants to
> programmatically authorize this operation?  If not, don't we need to pass User
> identity and roles as well?

>

> 2) destroyEntity (aka destroyTemplate).  Since we seem to want to support
> creating new entities from existing one's do we want to support cascading
> delete?  If not we likely should support bulk deletes. [Note: should we
> consider bulk create as well for import/export/publish purposes?]  As with
> create entity the consumer ID should be passed.

Eilon wrote (and I condense...):

[...]

> Would you find the following, radically simplified, suggestion for an operation 

> name intrusive:

> createPortlet 

> Along those lines, a portal would call the operation createPortlet, would get back a

> (persistent) portletID and then (optionally) call createSession with the portletID.

[...]

> 2. The ability to create a persistent key seems to be only under the scope of

> WSRP and not under WSIA. WSIA supports a persistent key to create sessions and

> to subsequent operations, but wouldn't probably deal with how they are created

> and  management (with all the associated issues that are well described in Mike's

> latest summary). Hence, the motivation to use a portal-specific name.

 

So now Gil writes:

It seems that Michael, Eilon, and myself believe that the createEntity/Template/Portlet operation is particular to WSRP (Rich, I even remember adding the "templateKey" thingie as a shot in the dark to where WSRP is going - it seems the shot missed!).

I suggest then, dropping this from the joint interface subcommitee, and leaving it in the hands of the WSRP. Having said that, we must be able to support some type of connection between the template/entity/portlet and the "session handle", so what I propose is that the createSession/Instance operation (outlined above) will accept an unspecified "bindingKey", i.e.:

sessionHandle/ID = createSession/Instance(bindingKey).

The "bindingKey" will be an opaque string to be defined either by the WSIA service, or defined by specs above WSIA (i.e. WSRP). One can argue that this is similar to JDBC's "connection URL" (in getConnection) which is an opaque string specified when "connecting". WSRP could also use it to specify the "sub-service/portlet" of the container, if WSRP decides to go the heterogenous.

 

My suggestion is to drop the createEntity/Template/Portlet, and leave:

 

sessionHandle = createSession(bindingKey) [bindingKey is an opaqueString, which will be used in the future by WSRP binding specifications]

getMarkup/performAction....(sessionHandle, ...) [i.e. all operations within the session will receive the sessionHandle]

destroySession(sessionHandle)

 

And, as Michael suggested, resolve timeout and implict session creation and deletion issues ASAP.

 

(I specifically dropped the "propertyList" arguments as they are not the issue here, but that doesn't mean that I don't support them).

 

Gil Tayar

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