[wsia] On Transient Thingies - Relation to Sessions (3/3)

Title: Message

Hi 
All,

 

In 
continuation on the previous two notes, and assuming that this note doesn't 
become obsolete after today's joint committee call, here's a quick note on the 
conceptual difference between Transient Thingies and 
sessions.

 

Clearly, a 
single session may serve multiple portlets, and TransientThingies are not 
meant to be so, for the reason described in the previous 
notes.

 

However, if 
we allow the Producer to change the Transient Thingies in each operation, then 
Transient Thingies become a superset of sessions and sessions can be easily 
implemented easily using Transient Thingies (which leads to think that we don't 
need the concept of a session as a separate concept).

 

So, for 
example, if a portal puts two portlets on the page served by the same remote 
portlet container, then the portal calls the container asking for two Transient 
Thingies. The container can encode the session as part of the Transient Thingy, 
e.g.,

 

createTransientThingy(1) returns "X1-ABD223" 
(id-session-id)

createTransientThingy(2) returns "X2-ABD223" 
(id-session-id)

 

When 
subsequent calls to the Producer transfer the TransientThingy, the Producer (the 
portal container, for example) can extract the session ID - if appropriate - 
also the transient identity of the individual portlet within that 
session.

 

Cheers,

Eilon