Speaking as the spec lead of the Portlet Bridge ... my take on this
.... inline.
On 2/17/2011 1:20 PM, Ed Burns wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:58:56 -0500, Stephen
Kenna<kenna(a)us.ibm.com> said:
SK> Just looking for a quick clarification on the following statement:
SK> Make the composite component feature usable so a "component server" can
be
SK> included in a portlet runtime such that portlets can use the components in
SK> context-dependent ways. This feature is known as "remote components"
in
SK> the portlet community.
SK> Is 'remote components' referring to WSRP?
No, this is a new idea that was kicking around from the time we
developed the composite component feature and Mike Freedman from the
Portlet spec suggested something very similar. Considering that a
composite component declares its interface and impl in markup, it's
possible to allow your deployed composite component library to be served
up in response to simple get requests.
My answer would be yes and no. What I am hoping is designed is support
for composite component implementations that are independent from their
declaration. Furthermore, I am hoping that such a design allows such
implementations to be remote from the web application using them (it).
Lastly, I am hoping that such a design has the flexibility that allows
for differing remote provider implementations/platforms to be used to
satisfy/proxy/bind remote composite components. Yes, as Ed indicates
above one such provider might be based on REST. But this is where I
answer yes to your question, I for one intend to work hard at supporting
a provider based on the portlet technologies. So, yes, in such a case
when the composite component is truly remote, WSRP would be the
underlying protocol used for communication.
SK> Also, do we need to open a new JSR for a JSF 2.x Portlet
Bridge? I see
SK> you have referred to the existing JSR 329 which was written for JSF 1.2.
Personally, I think we do need to open up such a JSR, and having IBM's
support for such a JSR would be very helpful. However, what *I'm*
trying to establish is support for a new JSR for JSF. A portlet JSR is
another matter entirely.
Opening a JSR for the Portlet 2.0 Bridge for JSF 2.0 is currently being
looked at. However, as JSF 2.0 has already been out for some time, its
currently felt we would better support the community by publishing a
stable, working implementation of such a bridge based on logical
extensions/migration of JSR 329 before getting into the thick of the JSR
process which tends to be more methodical. To that end there is now a
3.0.x Trunk in svn of the Apache MyFaces PortletBridge project (where
the JSR RI work is):
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/myfaces/portlet-bridge/core/trunk_3.0.x
. This code is stable enough for an alpha release in that it passes the
upgraded version of the 329 TCK and runs the various Ajax and
CompositeComponent samples I could find on the web/in Mojarra. I will
be doing an official (alpha) release shortly once I have clearance. But
in the meantime, interested parties can build/use it directly from this
repository. FYI ... anyone wanting to do so may want to contact me as I
have found bugs in both Mojarra and MyFaces that prevent proper
execution in a portlet environment. I can suggest/provide various
patches to get around these problems.
Finally, since the question was asked here -- when proposed the Bridge
JSR a few years ago there was a discussion on whether it needed to be
separated from JSF or not. At the time we argued that it should be
because the nuances of the portlet environment needed the focus of that
community more than the JSF community. Now that the core of the bridge
have been defined, standardized, and proven to work in practice, its
useful to revisit this question. Given that the underlying portlet spec
is both stable and unlikely to change in the near or medium future, it
seems that the bridge is now pretty much only tied to future JSF
enhancements. Is it time to tie this work closer to the JSF standards
work? If so, what form do you think this should take?
-Mike-
Ed