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:]
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002
12:06 AM
To: Tamari, Yossi
Cc:
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:]
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-
