The fastest, easiest, and often best designed way to convert an existing application to use portal is to port the application as 1 big portlet. Take a look at the PetStore example that comes with JetSpeed. It's 1 big portlet.
Yes, I know your immediate reaction is "but I wanted to be able to use portal's layout technology to break up my application into separate regions on a screen." But that requirement is a common trap. Portlets should for the most part be independent applications. If your portlet can't work without the presence of other portlets on the screen, then it's probably not a good choice for a portlet. Yes, interportlet communication is possible through the use of a the portlet session in JSR 168. But if you go that route, you're making your application 10x to 20x times more complicated than it needs to be. Inter-portlet communication is the #1 driver of excessive and unnecessary complexity in applications written in portal. In a true portal, you have no idea what pages your portlet will be on. So you cannot design your portlets with the assuption that they'll be on a page with other portlets from the same application. Each portlet should be an "independent stand alone application." Now your task is you educate your users on what exactly is a portal and what exactly is a portlet. Other users here on the list... Back me up here... Do you feel this is an appropriate design best practice? Doug -----Original Message----- From: news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Konrad Billewicz Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 2:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Portlet communication Hi, Is it possible to communicate portlets each other in Struts-based application under Jetspeed? I would like to make a menu as a portlet. When I press certain menu item, I would like some portlets to disapear, some to show up, some to execute other action (in Struts meaning) and so on... Can I do it using Jetspeed? This feature is quite important because I have an application made using Weblogic and I have a task to convert it to work with OS Portal. Best regards. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
