Re: [wsrp-interfaces] [wsrp][intefaces] Use case for user filteredgetDescription()

[michael_hillerman@peoplesoft.com]

Yes, this is a valid and useful use case that the protocol needs to
support.  Overloading the getDescription method seems like a reasonable
approach to me.




                                                                                                                                        
                      "Michael Freedman"                                                                                                
                      <Michael.Freedman@        To:       interfaces <wsrp-interfaces@lists.oasis-open.org>, wsrp-wsia                  
                      oracle.com>                <wsrp-wsia@lists.oasis-open.org>                                                       
                                                cc:                                                                                     
                      08/08/2002 04:00          Subject:  [wsrp-interfaces] [wsrp][intefaces] Use case for user filtered getDescription 
                      PM                         ()                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        





During today's conference call I asked the question "Do we care about
allowing the consumer to ask get me the description of all the entities
that this user has access to?" I indicated our Portal has such a
capability but wasn't sure if/how its used. After a little discussion we
tabled the question pending having me report back with a use case (if
any).  This is our use case:
     In our portal when a user displays the portlet repository (toolbox)
she is only shown those portlets she has access to.  Though the bulk of
this authorization is controlled via the Portal's authorization
mechanisms we do provide a hook to the portlets authorization mechanism
so it has an opportunity to decide.  (i.e. only users in a given portlet
role can add this to portlet to a page).

Our requirement seems to be express in some way via the protocol a way
to ask the question can this user access this portlet?  For efficiency
reasons it makes sense to expand this to what portlets can this user
access?  In our proprietary portlet protocol we chose to overload
getDescription to accomplish this.  Our getDescription takes an optional
user which when present means only return me the information about those
portlets this user can see.

What we now need to answer are:
     a) is this a valid and useful usage scenario we should support in
the protocol?
     b) if so, how should we support it?  getDescription overload?  Or
should we have an isRunnable() type call (expecting of course these and
other calls will ultimately be expanded to be [bulk] array based for
efficiency?
       -Mike-



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