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Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Actions vs. Events


I imagine that the intent is to have semantically separate notions reflected
explicitly in the API? It seems like cleaner code in the portlet
implementation if the event handling and action handling operations are
distinct since they are likely to have different kinds of representations.

Regardless of whether you separate actions and events into distinct
operations, we still require the same "two phase" approach to executing
actions and collecting markup if we allow actions to generate events. I'm
not sure this is really an exceptional case. It seems to me that this is the
kind of thing we'd like to do routinely to allow services to be combined in
portals to create new an interesting kinds of applications.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 2:58 PM
To: PAVLIK,GREGORY (HP-NewJersey,ex2)
Cc: Carsten Leue; wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Actions vs. Events


In your example, why isn't an action just an event?  I have no problem
defining
an event mechanism portlets can use in special purpose situations (such as
you
suggest).  And I expect such events to fire in a phase before rendering
occurs.
However, all this is going to make events a heavyweight operation.  My
concern
is having us define a heavyweight mechanism that is mandated for use by all
but
only really needed by the few.
      -Mike-

"PAVLIK,GREGORY (HP-NewJersey,ex2)" wrote:

> A simple scenario that may help clarify why actions and events should be
> separate from markup.
> 1) user submits action to portal initiating action/event phase,
> 2) portal submits action to portlet
> 3) action generates event consumed by another portlet,
> 4) second portlet generates event that is consumed by first portlet
> 5) action/event handling phase of portal is finished
> 6) portal calls getMarkup to retrieve markup corresponding to current
state
> of first portlet.
>
> The user is not interested in any of the intermediate states or markup
that
> might be generated as a result of these states, only the markup
> corresponding to the final state of the portlet.
>
> Greg
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 2:26 PM
> To: Carsten Leue
> Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Actions vs. Events
>
> Carsten,
>     Thanks for this write-up.  I better understand the differences between
> actions and
> events.  What I don't understand is why action handling is absolutely
> essential.
> Web/servlet programmers have gotten along fine without this abstraction
for
> a long time
> now.  And I don't see anything (yet) in how you have defined actions that
> provide
> benefit over and above handling the action as part of a render/getmarkup.
> And given
> our performance concerns I imagine actions will either be defined to
return
> markup --
> i.e. they are another form of getmarkup/render.  Or "actions" will be
> modeled in the
> producer as part of a producer side portlet container -- i.e. the portal
> makes a render
> call but the producer side portlet container breaks this into an action
call
> followed
> by a render call.  This would seem to lessen the desirability of the
> abstraction.  Can
> you motivate "actions" more?
>      -Mike-
>
> Carsten Leue wrote:
>
> > Hi - as promised in the interface call here is a definition of what I
> would
> > define as "actions" and "events". We might use this as a starting point
> for
> > the further discussion.
> >
> > Both actions and events are notifications for a WSRP service.
> >
> > 1. Action:
> > Actions are notifications that are triggered by the user. During the
> > creation of markup the service encodes special URLs in the markup and
> > associates data to them.
> > The aggregator may need to rewrite the URLs to make them appear as links
> > and redirect them to the aggregator. The end user can click on the links
> to
> > trigger such an action. The aggregator then intercepts this and issues a
> > call to the action handler defined in the WSRP interface together with
the
> > data the service encoded in the markup. As a reaction to this action the
> > service may modify its state an regenerate its markup.
> > The following points are important in this scenario:
> > - the set of possible actions is defined by the server by embedding them
> in
> > the markup
> > - the end user triggers the actions
> > - there is only one consumer of an action: the service that embedded the
> > action into the markup
> >
> > 2. Event:
> > Events are launched programatically by components (the aggregator or one
> of
> > the services). Events are not directly represented in the markup but
> issued
> > by the components depending on their state (could be a timer, a system
> > event or as a reaction to an action). Events can either be broadcast to
> all
> > services or to a set of registered services.
> > The following points are important in this scenario:
> > - the set of receivers of events (listeners) is dynamic
> > - if a service fires an event it needs to connect to the listeners. This
> > might not always be possible due to firewall restrictions
> > - i becomes possible to halt the system by (accidentally) introducing
> > cycles in the event propagation
> >
> > Following this definition event handling is much more complex and error
> > prone than action handling and the two serve different purposes: user
> > interaction and notification.
> >
> > 3. Relationship to WSRP
> > From my point of view we should clearly distinguish between action
> handling
> > and event handling in WSRP. Event handling easily becomes very complex
and
> > is not always required to support portal/portlet interaction. Maybe we
> > should separate event handling out into an optional interface. My
> > proposition would be to reuse the WSIA event handling interfaces for
this
> > but leave it up to the service to support this feature.
> > Action handling however is abosultely essential for user interaction.
For
> > this reason it makes sense for me to include this functionality into the
> > base WSRP interface.
> >
> > I added a PDF document to further clarify the distinction graphically.
> >
> > (See attached file: Action vs Event.zip)
> >
> > Best regards
> > Carsten Leue
> >
> > -------
> > Dr. Carsten Leue
> > Dept.8288, IBM Laboratory Böblingen , Germany
> > Tel.: +49-7031-16-4603, Fax: +49-7031-16-4401
> >
> >
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >                                  Name: Action vs Event.zip
> >    Action vs Event.zip           Type: Winzip32 File
> (application/x-zip-compressed)
> >                              Encoding: BASE64
> >                       Download Status: Not downloaded with message
>
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