RE: [wsia] [wsrp] [wsrp-wsia joint interfaces] Merged interfacesdocument

[Rich Thompson <richt2@us.ibm.com>]

We have to work through the array idea as it as big performance
implications and I don't see any indications that call batching at the SOAP
stack level will be available in a relatively short timeframe.

My understanding from the WSRP interfaces discussions is that a template is
a portal concept. It is effectively a configured portlet that is used from
a toolbox to design pages. The concept of an instance is a configured
portlet that is linked to the layout of a portal page. This configuration
MAY have come from cloning a template. From the perspective of what the
Producer needs to support, both of these are particular configurations of
an entity the service exposes with the Consumer choosing to use them in
different ways. I have been searching for reasons why there would be a
difference for the entity, but haven't found one yet.

If I understand your question about transient entities correctly, you see
why sessions should be separated from entities so that they can be shared
but question whether services will ever expose entities that aren't
persistent. I can certainly imagine entities with no persistence (the
service that hosts them likely has some persistence of who may use them
along with some use log for audit & billing purposes). A simple entity that
puts a UI on a stock ticker feed may be a good example. It chooses to
delegate all the billing issues to the service where it is deployed and all
the configuration persistence to its Consumers. In this case,
createPersistentEntities() would always fail as only transient entities are
supported.



                                                                                                                    
                      Andre Kramer                                                                                  
                      <andre.kramer@eu.        To:       Rich Thompson/Watson/IBM@IBMUS, wsia@lists.oasis-open.org, 
                      citrix.com>               wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org                                           
                                               cc:                                                                  
                      06/10/2002 10:37         Subject:  RE: [wsia] [wsrp] [wsrp-wsia joint interfaces] Merged      
                      AM                        interfaces     document                                             
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                    



Supporting a batch operation mode through arrays does not seem very clean.
In the "getFragment"
case (getFragments?), the portal will most likely then have to wait until
the whole array is
returned (i.e. all remote portlets have rendered) before it can display the
resulting mark-up.
How many consumer to producer parallel calls do we expect typically? I
would
rather leave
call batching up to the (future) SOAP stack.

Always using "Entity" as the thing to create remotely seem to loose the
"class" versus "object"
semantics that the WSRP "template" and "instance" operation names used to
imply. Do we now see no
no difference between remote data storage - 'templates' (possibly with
inheritance) and
computational entities - 'instances', that WSRP seems to naturally call
for?
Or are these the
persistent v.s. transient entities of the document (for me, portlet
instances persist too)?

In trying to follow the discussion, I'm confused as to why we need both
sessions and transient
entities, both being under the control of the consumer. I do see a need for
common sessions
(same user/group or consumer portal) but do not see the need for other
transient entities,
expecting a consumer to have to pay for all entities, in some way, in the
real world. I know
the next call will discuss these but could someone give a brief rational
before then?

Thanks,
Andre

Andre Kramer, Citrix Systems, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rich Thompson [mailto:richt2@us.ibm.com]
Sent: 07 June 2002 20:38
To: wsia@lists.oasis-open.org; wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [wsia] [wsrp] [wsrp-wsia joint interfaces] Merged interfaces
document



Here is a draft of the merged interfaces document that Carsten and I have
been working on this week. The largest conceptual change from the previous
0.44 Joint Spec Draft is the appearance of arrays in most of the
operations. This allows Consumers on the scale of portals to efficiently
interact with Producer services.

(See attached file: WSIA - WSRP Interface Specification.doc)