[wsia] Sessions and Transient Entities

Title: Message

Mike,

 

Per your 
recent e-mails, I think that the approach makes sense.

 

The only 
thing that concerns me is that we have two different mechanisms to handle what 
would seem to be a very similar scenario.

 

Scenario 1: 
If there are two occurrences of a single portlet on a page, then as you 
described it the portlet is responsible for segregating the occurrence-specific 
information, using an additional key provided by the portal.

 

Scenario 2: 
If there are two occurrences of a pair of portlets, then suddenly the 
portal is responsible for segregating the two pairs by placing them in two 
separate sessions.

 

(All, of 
course, assuming that the portlets use sessions)

 

The idea of 
the Consumer creating and managing the segregation keys has the scalability advantage that you 
mentioned.

 

Can't we use it to handle both 
scenarios?

 

Namely:

 

In scenario 1, where there's portlets A1 and A2, then 
the portal sends a key "1" when displaying A1 and a key "2" when displaying A2. 

In scenario 2, when there's portlet pairs <A1, 
B1> and <A2, B2>, then the portal sends a key "1" when displaying A1 
and B1 and the key "2" when displaying A2 and B2.

 

This would allow the Producer to create and manage the 
session id (and maybe even create them only when needed, instead of explicitly 
creating them up-front as the current draft suggests). The Consumer only has to 
take into account that it may receive (and needs to re-send) a separate session 
id for each one of the keys.

 

Eilon