Portlets, Servlets, Portal Integration and I-frames.

Hello,

I am trying to get some clarity within the terms used for the integration of websites. When looking at the documentation of Developerweb (connectivity services) I have found little information about these techniques.

From other sources I have found the terms:
Portlets, Servlets, Portal Integration and I-frames.

Based on my sources:
- Portlets are similar to web services, but offer the addition of a graphical user interface which allows for interactions that consists of multiple steps. They should be developed using a programming standard for interoperability with other websites.
- Servlets are similar to the principle of portlets, but are Java specific and therefore closer to the domain of WebManager. For interoperability they use the Java standards.

For the terms I-frame and Portal Integration I do not have a clear description. My assumption is that an I-frame is the WebManager interface to an available servlet / portlet from another website. The act putting the I-frame in the WebManager application could then be referred to as Portal Integration.

Can anyone add to this to increase understanding of these principles?

For me a servlet is from a different department than portlets, portal integration en iframe's.

an iframe is a simple html construct to include another url in your current webpages. We do have a socalled iframe element as WCB that can be added to GX Webmanager so that an editor can insert an iframe in a page.

Portlet in Java terms refer to JSR-168/268. Portal integration refers to ingrate content from multiple sources which could/may be portlets.

Servlet are plain old things that can do all kind of 'things' for you..

Regards,

Michel

Thanks for the reply.

I am not quite clear about the distinction between portlet and servlet. Is there any technical destinction or are they both just formats for program code on the server?

Also about the I-frame; can I consider the following WCB's as examples of I-frame WCB's (html constuct) or is a different kind of portal integration at hand here?

Google Maps WCB
Google Video WCB
YouTube Video WCB

This is an Iframe:
http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_iframe.asp

The other wcb's you mention embed a video (or googlemap, which uses javascript) on a page. The difference is that an Iframe is really on another page and the other ones are not. They are more like showing a picture from a different website.

Great, the example of an I-frame clears things up.

So, the techniques for portal integration are then:
- I-frame (e.g. <iframe src ="/default.asp" width="100%"> </iframe>).
- Javascript (e.g. google maps wcb).
- Embedding through html object (e.g. YouTube Video, Google Video).
- Portlets, that need JSR.
- Servlets, although about Servlets I am not sure if these are possible to integrate within another website.

JSR in itself says nothing. It's JSR-168/268 I was talking about. Another form of integration with GX Webmanager to be considered is Application Integration.

Your statement that techniques for portal integration are equal to embedding using HTML constructs are a bit to easy for me. It's probably better to read more into the Portlet API and its' goals and means..(http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/edr/jsr286/index2.html)
It will help you abstract concept from implementation..

Regards,

Michel

More background about integration, portlets and the relationship between portlets and WCBs can be found here:

http://www.gxdeveloperweb.com/Blogs/Martijn-van-Berkum/WCB-portlet-int...

The portlet standard (JSR-168/268) is meant for portal environments (not consumer portals like Yahoo, but internal systems for knowledge workers). It can be applied to consumer driven portals, but applications like intranets are more suitable. A portlet is a superset of servlets. For example, a servlet has the well known doGet and doPost methods, portlet has three additional views: doView, doEdit, doHelp, and the portal container can invoke those methods to show the view, the edit/preferences or the help message. It also has the concept of 'window states', so the portlet knows if the portlets is closes, maximized, minimized etc. As Michel already said, it might be a good idea to browse the JSR 286 documentation to get a better idea of the technology. This is also a nice introduction article about portlets:
http://www.developer.com/java/web/article.php/3366111

A portlet is more strict and encapsulated then servlets or JSPs. The layout surrounding the portlet is managed by the portal container. Servlets and JSPs give complete control of the layout of a rendered page.

Thanks for the useful information sources. I will take some time to digest them :)

And how about widgets?

Doesn't a widget require a container that understands the contract a that will render services to it? Sofar GX Webmanager doesn't have such a container. AFAIK it's just a some HTML that shows the widget to in that case you could easily build your own element WCB that does this for you or any other presentation that renders this HTML.

Regards,

Michel