[Zope3-dev] JSR 168, WSRP et al

[Rob Page]

On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 09:42, Yves Moisan wrote:
> As this is the only Z3 list that I know of, I'll post this message here 
> even though it's off topic.  I was reading the oher day about portal 
> specs and I was wondering if the component architecture of Z3 was "akin" 
> (or similar, competing, eventually compatible, not at all related ... ?) 
> to things like JSR 168 or WSRP?  Or is it Java community acronyms?
> 
> In a recent article in Web Services Journal 
> http://sys-con.com/webservices/articleprint.cfm?id=731, Alec Graziano 
> says "... how good is this vendor's support for emerging portal and Web 
> services standards" amongst considerations w/r to choosing a portal 
> framework or application server to develop with.  I was wondering if 
> that applied to Zope.

JSR 168 is a Java-specific _API_ for portal components.  The idea is
that developers can write Java components/beans to the JSR 168
specification in isolation and know that they will work together.  I
don't know if this is true but it's the promise behind the JSR.

While I personally think there are interesting lessons (i.e., patterns)
to learn from the specification there is no direct leverage for python
or Zope.

WSRP, otoh, is a web services mechanism for assembling portals from
components that are fetched and managed over SOAP.  Among many other
things, it defines the behavior for fetching a form in an HTML fragment
from a remote site, "slotting" into your portal and handling form POSTs
or GETs back to the portal/origin server.

IMHO, the jury is still out with respect to whether WSRP is viable...  
It promises a LOT of processing for the portal server to do just to
abstract out the "behind the scenes" origin servers.  The _idea_ of
assembling composite pages from parts (some locally created and some
fetched from remote servers) is definitely interesting to Zope3.

You can save a lot of complexity and get most of the functionality from
Edge Side Includes:

 - http://www.esi.org/

 - http://www.esi.org/press103002.html

Regards,
Rob

-- 
Rob Page                V: 540.361.1710
Zope Corporation        F: 703.995.0412