RE: [wsrp-comment] XML as returning type of getMarkup()

[Eilon Reshef <eilon.reshef@webcollage.com>]

Title: Message

Hi Timo,

 

The WSIA/WSRP committees have focused most of their attention on "plug-and-play" visual portlets that return markup which is readily embeddable into a page. In most cases, that means HTML markup, although other markup types are also possible.

 

The committees have not spent time discussing a scenario in which the returned markup needs to be transformed in a portlet-specific way (as this would not enable true plug-and-play). It is likely that it is possible to implement such a scenario using a WSIA/WSRP portlet architecture one way or another. However, when the Producer of the service returns plain data (i.e., XML), it is unclear whether one should be using a portlet architecture or just use a plain remote XML Web service - similar to the way one would bring data from an external data source. The portlet architecture would likely not add much value in such a case.

 

To use visual interactive WSIA/WSRP services that are customizable via an internal XML/XSL architecture, one may propose an architecture that stores the XSL document as part of the Consumer-specific configuration information on the portlet end (more specifically, as part of the Entity, and even more specifically, as a Property). With such an architecture, the portlet would still be returning HTML markup to the Consumer, but it would allow the Consumer (and potentially the user) to have finer control over the presentation. However, WSIA and WSRP do not standardize the way in which such architectures are created, so that (for example) the scheme of the underlying document would need to be published in a completely custom way (e.g., as part of the description), etc.

 

Hope that helps - please consider this a personal view of the specification, other members may have different viewpoints,

 

Eilon

-----Original Message-----
From: Timo Tetzlaf [mailto:Timo.Tetzlaf@metris.de]
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 8:29 AM
To: 'wsrp-comment@lists.oasis-open.org'
Subject: [wsrp-comment] XML as returning type of getMarkup()

Hi,

 

I have some questions in regard to XML to "WSIA - WSRP Core Specification".

 

How do you handle the XML that is returned from the 'getMarkup()' Operation, assuming 'markupType' of 'MarkupParams' is
set to 'XML' ?
Is XML a valid 'markupType' in the specification at all ?
If it is right, will the corresponding DTD or XSL files referenced by the 'Extension' field of the 'EntityDescription'
structure or will a DTD or be defined in the future ?

 

Example:
-------------
Assumed the getMarkup() Operation returns HTML in 'MarkupResponse'.
If I want to aggregate a few tree-browser-portlets( to browse in a tree-structure ) from different Producers into the
portal server in future, maybe all portlets have different layouts. May be the layout adapted by the use of CSS,
e.g. text-color and text-font, but images, which will be used, are not changeable.
By using XML instead of HTML in this example the proxy-portlet at the consumerside have to generate the html fragments.
And so it is possible to integrate this into the portal layout.
But to do this you have to know which XML elements will be returned.
Do I have to reference the needed DTD and/or XSL in the 'Extension' structure ?

 

Another way would be to specify a complete tree structure in the specification.

 

Has this been considered ?

 

I hope you understand what I mean, and can help me.

 

Thanks,
Timo Tetzlaf