RE: [wsrp][interfaces] Portlet instance handles

["Cassidy, Mark" <mcassidy@Netegrity.com>]

>  On the surface it seems that portlets need an id that represents a
>portal's portlet page instance on a per user basis as a key to that
>user's personalization data for that portlet instance.  Are there other
>needs for this key?  If not why do we need to generate such an id if
>there is no personalization data or if the personalization is being
>managed by the portlet itself (in this case the portlet can choose to
>generate its own id and managed the mapping itself)?  And even if the
>portal is maintaining the personalization data why can't it choose the
>key itself?

As long as the per-instance personalization is provided for, whether it's
done via the personalization being tied to the instance handle or through a
level of indirection given some sort of userID that's transferred along with
the instance handle, the same end result is accomplished.  The key point is
that per-instance personalization is required.  From a security perspective,
I agree with Yossi:  there are many content scenarios where user's
'personalize' their view(of a portlet instance) without needing to provide
any identifying information about themselves.  

Seems that any bloat associated with having handles being
per-user/per-instance would be proportional to the number of portlet
parameters that are shared across users of an instance versus the number of
parameters that are personalizable by each user.  From my experience, the
persistent data managed for individual user personalization is the largest
component. Bloat may not be as big an issue given that we have to support
per-instance personalizaton in some fashion.  


-----Original Message-----
From: Tamari, Yossi [mailto:yossi.tamari@sapportals.com]
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 6:31 AM
To: 'Michael Freedman '; 'WSRP '
Subject: RE: [wsrp][interfaces] Portlet instance handles


Hi Mike,

The way I was looking at the handle was as an opaque generated by the
portlet and returned to it on consecutive calls by the portal.
The portal will probably have its internal handle for each portlet, but this
is outside our scope.
The idea here is that the portlet CAN generate a different handle for every
user, if it manages personalization data, or it can return the same handle
for all users.
The advantage of this over passing the user id is that the portlet know that
this is the same user that requested it before, but it doesn't know WHO this
user actually is. This gives the user an added layer of privacy (for
portlets that do not require profile or user information).

          Yossi.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Freedman
To: WSRP
Sent: 5/9/02 11:47 PM
Subject: [wsrp][interfaces] Portlet instance handles

Folks,
   In a number of subcommittees I believe it has been expressed/assumed
that:
        a) Portlet instances have unique persistent ids/handles that
will be retained both by the portal and the portlet service.
        b) A portlet instance (handle) corresponds to a given user of a
given portlet on a portal page.
        c) This handle will be generated by the portlet service.

   I have been surprised by (b) being part of the assumption and would
like to understand better why folks feel this the right way to model
things.  I am surprised because it seems to require the portal maintain
N instance references per portlet on a page where N corresponds to the
number of users (who have visited this page).  Representing a database
company I guess I should be happy that we want this data bloat ;-)
Seriously, however, I would like to understand why we think its
proper/necessary to manage this persistent id when a more lightweight
mechanism exists -- namely one persistent id that represents the portlet
instance on the page + the current user identity.  Basically, it seems
the downside of the assumed/proposed approach are large(r) data sets
being maintained in the portal that likely makes export operations,
upgrades, etc. more expensive.  In addition it requires the portal to
runtime map from an obvious key (the page's portlet instance and the
user id) to this handle.
   On the surface it seems that portlets need an id that represents a
portal's portlet page instance on a per user basis as a key to that
user's personalization data for that portlet instance.  Are there other
needs for this key?  If not why do we need to generate such an id if
there is no personalization data or if the personalization is being
managed by the portlet itself (in this case the portlet can choose to
generate its own id and managed the mapping itself)?  And even if the
portal is maintaining the personalization data why can't it choose the
key itself?
   -Mike-




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