OASIS Web Services Interactive Applications TC

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RE: [wsia] RE: [wsrp] Sessions and Transient Entities

  • 1.  RE: [wsia] RE: [wsrp] Sessions and Transient Entities

    Posted 06-18-2002 17:30
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    Subject: RE: [wsia] RE: [wsrp] Sessions and Transient Entities


    Title: RE: [wsia] RE: [wsrp] Sessions and Transient Entities
    Excuse me for saying in advance that what follows is just my best understanding at present, and represents my opinion, not a statement of consensus even if it sounds like that's what I'm saying. It is just easier for me to make statements than to hem and haw around a point in order to find a very politically correct and inoffensive way to phrase things.

    I thought that consumers asked for sessions from producers who provide portlets/entities, and it is the producer who gives a session a sessionID. As of now we have only defined a session to the extent that it is specific to a single producer to a single consumer to a single end-user. We haven't successfully approached consensus other than that AFAIK.

    We have not yet adopted or reached consensus on how more than one producer's portlets can be included in some concept of a shared session. However...

    A consumer can have as many portlets from as many producers as needed for an individual end-user and how it manages that operation is up to the consumer. I don't understand what the spec can do to make that easier or more manageable.  In the case of a number of producers in sequence the problem would get worse with each producer-consumer pairing.

    Portlets from different producers don't need to know about each other unless we burden the specification with a process for doing so. That it would make some combinations of specific pairings easier to manage for some consumers is without doubt, but we need to weigh the cost to all.

    Portlets from a single producer MAY know about each other at the discretion of the producer. The consumer MAY ask to know if portlets from a single producer have knowledge of each other in a session those portlets share from that producer, and it is up to the producer to allow the consumer to know whether those portlets share their state information within that kind of shared session. IMO portlets from different producers SHOULD NOT be required to share sessions.

    Where 90 percent of the confusion over this issue has arisen is from the notion that a consumer creates a session, which we have held all along was a function of the producer because the producer has to manage its sessions and entities in order to return the correct portlet/entity to each consumer's requests and so gives it the sessionID for that purpose. The need for a consumer to have the ability through the specification to create a named session that combines portlets from more than one producer is the real sticking point, no matter how many ways you find to say it in different words.

    I suspect my position on that is apparent. However, as always, I will go along with the consensus.

    Ciao,
    Rex


    At 3:05 PM -0400 6/18/02, Eilon Reshef wrote:
    Can you elaborate on why you believe it is useful for the portlets not to know who they are sharing the state with?