Improving portlet interoperability through deep annotation

  • Authors:
  • Oscar Díaz;Jon Iturrioz;Arantza Irastorza

  • Affiliations:
  • Univ. of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain;Univ. of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain;Univ. of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain

  • Venue:
  • WWW '05 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Portlets (i.e. multi-step, user-facing applications to be syndicated within a portal) are currently supported by most portal frameworks. However, there is not yet a definitive answer to portlet interoperation whereby data flows smoothly from one portlet to a neighbouring one. Both data-based and API-based approaches exhibit some drawbacks in either the limitation of the sharing scope or the standardization effort required. We argue that these limitations can be overcome by using deep annotation techniques. By providing additional markup about the background services, deep annotation strives to interact with these underlying services rather than with the HTML surface that conveys the markup. In this way, the portlet producer can extend a portlet markup, a fragment, with data about the processes whose rendering this fragment supports. Then, the portlet consumer (e.g. a portal) can use deep annotation to map an output process in fragment A to an input process in fragment B. This mapping results in fragment B having its input form (or other "input" widget) filled up. We consider deep annotation as particularly valid for portlet interoperation due to the controlled and cooperative environment that characterizes the portal setting.