RE: [wsrp][wsia][wsrp-wsia joint interfaces][Draft Spec 0.43]Sess ionand Entity Handles

In the interest of 
sanity and progress, I have broken up Rich's, Michael's, Monica's and Eilon's 
emails into four subjects - "Shared Transient Information", "Persistent 
Information Scope", "createEntity/createTemplate/createPortlet", "session and 
entity handles", and "Property lists".

 

This email will deal 
with Session and Entity Handles, and 
the relevant quotes from the emails and my reply to them:

 

Rich wrote:

> Rather than "Manifestation", I would 
propose using "Entity" to describe the
> 
thing from which markup may be requested. I think it has the right level 
of
> opacity (Consumer has no idea 
what kind of entity it is) while carrying
> 
appropriate semantics (a thing that may be interacted with). Using 
these
> terms, there was also an 
open question at the end of our last call related
> to whether there were both persistent and 
transient entities ...

 > 

> If we are going to support explicit 
lifecycle for both of these, I would
> 
propose:
>    
handle   createEntity(handle, propertyValues)
>    sessionID   
createSession(handle, propertyValues)

Eilon wrote:

> think everybody is pretty much on 
the same page with regards to the term "session"

> which identifies the transient 
state. (And, as Rich noted, to people that come from

> an OO background, this would be 
the same as an object instance).

> 

> The 
tougher one is the persistent key, which in WSRP is typically referred to as 

> 
"instance", but 
as Rich noted 
this may be non-intuitive to people from an OO 

> background (who think of transient object 
instances), and hence the need for a 

> new 
term.

> 

> Would you 
find the following, radically simplified, 
suggestion for an operation name intrusive:

>

> "createPortlet"

>

[...]

> 
Wouldn't you tend to think that "ID" 
hints towards persistence and "Handle" hints

> towards 
transience and not vice-versa? 

 

So now Gil 
writes:

Actually, my "Manifestation" 
was meant to describe what is in this email roundup described as "session", 
while I think Rich thought it was about the persistent thingie, but 
as discussed in a previous email, the persistent 
"entity" is (arguably) a solely WSRP concept, so given that, and given Eilon's 
comment, we could change the term from entity to portlet, and stay with 
"session". The question is, what do we call the WSIA ____. A WSIA Service? A 
WSIA Component?

 

Given that, this is my take on 
terminology:

 

Portlet - the persistent thingie which WSRP should 
define in exact terms.

WSIA Component - The thing on which you invoke the 
operations (e.g. the Web Service that includes those 
operations).

Session - the "user session" the WSIA Component is "in" 
when it is "running".

 

And my take on the handle/ID 
issue:

sessionHandle = 
createSession(...)

Gil Tayar

WebCollage