[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]
Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
I think the question is just whether with "portlet instance" you mean the a
persistent entity that is displayed by "portlet view" or "active portlet
instance" as Gil proposed
or whether with "portlet instance" you mean the portlet view and you use
another word for the persistent entity.
In the first case, this would be an example:
A portlet instance exists as a persistent entity in the database. In the
case of a stocks portlet, it may contain a list of stock symbols of
interest for a user.
The portlet instance exists across requests and even when the user logs out
from the portal.
The "portlet view" or "active portlet instance" only exist when a page is
being viewed.
Best regards,
Thomas
Eilon Reshef <eilon.reshef@webcollage.com> on 04/15/2002 10:09:17 PM
Please respond to Eilon Reshef <eilon.reshef@webcollage.com>
To: "'Michael Freedman'" <Michael.Freedman@oracle.com>
cc: "'Gil Tayar'" <Gil.Tayar@webcollage.com>, "'Sasha Aickin'"
<AlexanderA@plumtree.com>, wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
Makes sense. My only personal confusion: what would be a concrete scenario
where - to Gil's first question - no user is seeing a portal page and yet
a portlet instance exists?
Eilon
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 3:21 PM
To: Eilon Reshef
Cc: 'Gil Tayar'; 'Sasha Aickin'; wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
I wonder if some of the confusion comes from point-of-view. The terms I
have set out to define are defined from the perspective of the portal. At
this point there are no assumptions or terms defined from the perspective
of the portlet. I.e. I have been attempting to define how a portal
interacts with a portlet through the lifecycle of a bound service without
discussing how this service models the behaviors. For example -- from a
portal perspective a portlet instance is element in the portal the
structure -- its likely that from a portlet modeling perspective the API
will represent the portals operations on the instance as a runtime (only)
thing. I.e. in the end the portal talks to a portlet service for all
operations (there aren't multiple objects/services). Operations are
defined not only by the method of the service itself but by the (form of)
data passed to the method.
As for whether we should define/discuss the design time -- First my goal
was to capture the portals perspective so we could discuss what WSRP should
concern itself with. In our concall last week, including portlet
templates (design-time) was discussed. A number of portal vendors
indicated they will need to define this behavior anyway -- and would prefer
a standard for it. We decided however to tackle the portlet instance case
first as it seemed more basic -- and once this level of the API was in good
shape to come back and look at portlet templates.
-Mike-
Eilon Reshef wrote: See my answers below. As Thomas noted, I think it's
mainly a terminology question, but I think it's important that eventually
we all sync up.My line of thought is that design-time is a pretty complex
thing, that we may or may not need to standardize, and there's a
portal-specific or portlet-specific workflow that results in possibly
portlet templates, all of which are persistent (so there could be an
administrator portlet template, then a superuser portlet template, then a
portlet for an individual user).Whenever an individual views the page,
then a portlet instance is created, to generate the view.Eilon
-----Original Message-----
From: Gil Tayar [mailto:Gil.Tayar@webcollage.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2002 2:11 AM
To: 'Sasha Aickin'; Michael Freedman
Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
Mike,The definition for portlet instance as a "a portlet in the portal
layout structure" is still confusing. Let me ask a question which will
maybe make things clearer between us - if no user is seeing a portal page,
does a portlet instance exist?If the answer is yes, then a portlet
instance is not (only?) a runtime manifestation. Moreover, we do not have
a name for the runtime manifestation, and I feel we should.If the answer
is no, then what is the word for the design time manifestation? Is it the
"portlet template"?My feeling is that there should be concensus on the
answer to this question, so that we will be on common ground on this very
important term - portlet instance.So, let me re-ask the question (and I
would really appreciate if all WSRP members could answer), and make them
more answerable : 1. If no user is seeing no portal page at a certain
point in time, does a portlet instance exist at that time?Answers:( ) Yes
( X ) No The portlet instance is a run-time object only. ( ) Other:
____________________________________________________________________2. If a
user is seeing a portal page at a certain point in time, is it the portlet
instance which is rendering the portlet?Answers:( X ) Yes Yes, the
portlet instance generates the markup in run-time ( ) No( ) Other:
____________________________________________________________________Cheers,Gil
-----Original Message-----
From: Sasha Aickin [mailto:AlexanderA@plumtree.com]
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 07:10
To: Michael Freedman; Gil Tayar
Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
Mike,I'd like to offer a slight clarification, if I could: I think that
WSRP/portlets care about a clone only if the service maintains its
personalization data AND the portlet service has to maintain information
about each portlet instance on each page. I feel like, as I think Yossi
said earlier, that the portal could implement clone by simply including
the same instance on two pages. That way, WSRP would not need to know
about cloning even if the portlet service maintained personalization
data.Cheers,Sasha.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 2:24 PM
To: Gil Tayar
Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
I believe that is how we have defined things:
portlet instance: a portlet on a page; or more generically a portlet
in the portal layout structure. From a portal's perspective, the portlet
instance is the realization of the portlet in the runtime layout
structure. A portlet instance is derived from a portlet template. e.g.
when adding a portlet to a page, the user chooses a portlet template
(from the toolbox). The template is used to "type" the instance being
created.
personalization data: a set of customized data settings for a portlet
instance. There is an 1 to N relationship between personalization data and
portlet instances. 1 set of personalizations may be shared between
multiple instances.
What is/was a little confusing was Yossi statement that "the same portlet
instance appears in different places in the portal structure". That is
not what I had indicated in my reply to him -- rather I said was
"personalization [data] can be shared between multiple portlet instances
of the same type." I.e. portlet instances ARE your runtime manifestations
on a page. There is a special case where two of these happen to share the
same personalization data. This tends to come into existence via some
kind of clone operation. WSRP/portlets care about this in the situation
the service maintains its personalization data.
I hope this helps.
-Mike-
Gil Tayar wrote: I second #1, as I outlined in my previous email. I
submit that what is confusing is the term "portlet instance". I would
prefer "portlet instance data" or "portlet customization data" and leave
"portlet instance" to the runtime manifestation on the page, e.g. only
when the user views it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tamari, Yossi [mailto:yossi.tamari@sapportals.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 11:28
To: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
Thanks for the answers, but I'm still not satisfied on 1 and 2...1. What
bothers me here is that the fact the same portlet instance appears in
different places in the portal structure is completely handled by the
portal. The producer does not know/care where this instance is in the
portal pages. Hence while the feature is logical in the portal framework,
I don't see its relevance to WSRP.2. I see your point, I'm just worried
about performance. We should give this some more thought. Maybe the
metadata could either give a URL\title or say that it is dynamic.
Yossi.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 12:06 AM
To: Tamari, Yossi
Cc: wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
Good questions.
1. What I meant when I said that personalization data can be shared
between multiple instances is that the personalization can be shared
between multiple portlet instances of the same type. For example I can
have two instances of a Stock portlet that share the same personalization
data. In this case both instances display the same result. When either
is customized, the changes are reflected in both as the personalization
data is shared. This generalization allows a consumer to expose the same
portlet (result) from different levels in its structure. Remember, a
portlet instance is defined as a particular reference in the structure
(portlet on a page). If you want the same content in two locations in
the structure you need the function defined here. One use of this is in a
portal that supports access from multiple devices. One can envision the
need to allow portal designers/users to maintain different portal
structures between the device (types). However, in such a world the end
user still wants access to the same content. Cloning is an operation
that can be used create a second portlet instance with the characteristics
that its personalization data is shared. So a cloned instance is one that
has the characteristics described above.
2. Yes, requesting a portlet instance to render a link reference to
itself does mean you ask the portlet to render an URL that returns its
content as markup. I agree that this operation can often be defined by
meta-data. However it may not always be static. In both this case and
the case we need to render a title bar for the portlet we must allow a
way for the portal (consumer) to acquire the portlet's (producers) title.
This is because the title is commonly personalizable -- hence dynamic.
Further discussions will resolve whether this occurs during a render
operation (get "Link") or is merely a getTitle API that returns a string.
Done in the former the portlet gets an opportunity to define/override the
standard getContent URL -- hence I included it in the list.
3. Whether changes to a portlet template's settings should affect
existing instances is a good question. We should discuss this in the next
phase. I will add it to the questions list in this area. I will also
remove the statement from the document (so it can be added once
answered). I agree there are basic configuration settings that should be
propagated. An example would be a news feed portlet that requires the URL
of the source be entered to wire the portlet to a particular news feed.
If this URL changes there needs to be a way for the update to alter
existing instances. On the flip side, one can also envision some
template settings being the initial personalization for an end user. Its
not as clear if these values should be propogated particularly if there is
support for > 1 level of personalization in the instance.
Hope this helps.
-Mike-
"Tamari, Yossi" wrote: Hi Mike,I need some clarifications:1.
personalization data - What does it mean that it can be shared between
multiple instances? do you mean instances of the same portlet? if so, why
is that a different instances, i.e. why should the consumer request the
exact same data twice? And how is that different from a cloned
instance?2. "You can request a portlet instance render a link reference to
itself" - Does that mean you ask the portlet for a URL that returns its
content as markup? I think this should be part of the meta-data, as it
does not need to be truly dynamic.3. Why should changes to the portlet
template's settings not affect existing instances? If the name of my
company was change, I want the new name rendered in ALL the instances.
Yossi.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Freedman [mailto:Michael.Freedman@oracle.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 9:53 PM
To: WSRP
Subject: [wsrp][interfaces]: Portal Usage Scenario
I have attached a short document describing a portal's possible usage
pattern for portlets using the terms we discussed last week. Please
comment/annotate with new operations or suggested operations to remove.
Please don't annotate with questions intended to clarify the behavior of
the operation, send these separately. The goal for this Thursday's meeting
is to see if we can agree on a preliminary usage pattern and collection
of operations. Hopefully we can then move into enumerating the questions
we need to answer. In our discussion on Thursday, I expect we will need
to classify at least the operational aspects of the usage scenario along
two axes:
Axis 1: Is this a valid Portal operation?
Yes, we all agree this a valid operation
No, we all agree this is not a valid operation
Maybe, there is debate whether this is a valid operation.
Don't know, we need more information and discussion to understand the
operation before classifying it.
Axis 2: Should this operation be covered/enabled by our spec?
Yes, we all agree.
Yes, but it should be addressed in a later revision.
No, we all agree.
Maybe, there is debate whether we should address this.
Don't know, we need more information to decide.
It might be useful if each of you did your own classification (assuming of
course the usage scenario isn't grossly controversial).
-Mike-
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]
Powered by eList eXpress LLC