Web Frameworks and Portlets: a Report from Java One

[Craig Doremus <cr...@maine.com>]

I am a Pluto committer, and recently returned from Java One. As you can 
imagine, there were plenty of talks on Web Frameworks at Java One this 
year including an enjoyable and educational session called Web 
Frameworks Smackdown.

I was particularly interested in finding out what was the status of 
portlet support for all the web frameworks. I feel that portlet 
technology will not become popular until there are popular web 
frameworks that support portlets. What follows is a summary of the most 
common web frameworks supplemented with information I discovered elsewhere.

* Java Server Faces: Stan Silvert, who works for JBoss and is a member 
of the JSF expert group, gave a talk on JSP and portlets. I was told 
later that the line to get in snaked around the building outside. Stan 
contributed portlet support to MyFaces, a JSF implementation. According 
to the talk, using JSF as a portlet is pretty straight forward when you 
only have a portlet with View mode. However, some subclassing and other 
modifications are required for the use of Edit or Help modes.

* Tapestry: Howard Lewis Ship, Tapestry's leader, talked to me for a few 
minutes after the Web Framework Smackdown. He said he has produced a 
module to support portlets for a client of his and that he has pretty 
much complete full portlet support. In fact, there is a 'Portlet 
Support' link to documentation off of the Tapestry home page. Ship 
indicated that version 4.0 of Tapestry will include the portlet support 
libraries.

* WebWork: Jason Carreira, a WebWork project leader, told me that there 
are some people actively working on portlet support for WebWork and said 
that their next version (2.2) should include this work.

* Spring: I talked with Rob Johnson in the hall between sessions about 
portlet support and Spring. I told him that I saw the post that John 
Lewis recently  sent to the Pluto-user mailing list about Spring-portlet 
support. I also said that I tried the Spring-enabled portlets out and 
was happy that they worked out-of-the-box with Pluto. He was interested 
in more detailed feedback on the implementation and said that he wants 
Spring to support portlets soon.

* Shale: Shale, a Struts sub-project, is attempting to add value to Java 
Server Faces like Struts did for the Servlet spec. It is in its early 
stages and there has not been an official release yet. During the Q & A 
following a special session on Shale, I asked Craig McLanahan about 
portlet support. He told me that portlets were a feature they were 
planning to support, but he did not elaborate

* Struts: There were no Struts sessions at Java One and it was not 
represented at the Web Frameworks Smackdown. When someone asked about 
Struts at the Smackdown, David Geary, a Struts committer, joked "Struts 
is old school. Get over it!" He was representing Shale at the session. I 
also know that Ate Douma, a Jetspeed committer, is working on a 
Struts-bridge that will soon be part of the Bridges subproject of Apache 
Portals.

I did not ask the obvious question of all these people: "When will 
version N, with portlet support, be released"? because I know that it is 
impossible to predict the schedule of an open source or JSR project. All 
I can say is that if you want portlet support in your favorite web 
framework soon, make it known to the leaders of the project, and, better 
yet, considering helping to make it happen.

Re: Web Frameworks and Portlets: a Report from Java One

[Ralph Goers <Ra...@dslextreme.com>]

> Thank you,  Ralph, for setting the record straight! Can you, or anyone 
> else, update us on the Cocoon portal? The web site says that it is in 
> the 'alpha' state 
> (http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/developing/portal/index.html).
> /Craig
>
Actually, Carsten Ziegeler, who is also a committer here, wrote most of 
it.  The Cocoon portal is interesting because it works very well as the 
site navigation framework for a web site, whether or not you actually 
use it as a portal.  It supports using Cocoon pipelines and external web 
applications as portlets, as well as JSR-168 portlets. 

The portal is no longer in alpha state. The cocoon doc is just kind of 
slow to be updated (there is a project underfoot to fix that).  My 
employer is using the portal to deploy web sites for our customers, and 
everyone involved with it seems to love it.  However, despite the fact 
that it is working fine, we know it needs improvement.  We would like to 
find better ways to deploy JSR-168 portlets - I'm not really happy with 
deploying them as web apps the way the spec says to. 

Ralph

Re: Web Frameworks and Portlets: a Report from Java One

[Craig Doremus <cr...@maine.com>]

>
>>
>>
>> I did not ask the obvious question of all these people: "When will 
>> version N, with portlet support, be released"? because I know that it 
>> is impossible to predict the schedule of an open source or JSR 
>> project. All I can say is that if you want portlet support in your 
>> favorite web framework soon, make it known to the leaders of the 
>> project, and, better yet, considering helping to make it happen.
>
>
> <Sigh>
>
> I notice your list of web frameworks did not include Cocoon.  It does 
> support portlets.
>
> Ralph
>

Thank you,  Ralph, for setting the record straight! Can you, or anyone 
else, update us on the Cocoon portal? The web site says that it is in 
the 'alpha' state 
(http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/developing/portal/index.html).
/Craig

Re: Web Frameworks and Portlets: a Report from Java One

[Ralph Goers <Ra...@dslextreme.com>]

Craig Doremus wrote:

> I am a Pluto committer, and recently returned from Java One. As you 
> can imagine, there were plenty of talks on Web Frameworks at Java One 
> this year including an enjoyable and educational session called Web 
> Frameworks Smackdown.
>
> I was particularly interested in finding out what was the status of 
> portlet support for all the web frameworks. I feel that portlet 
> technology will not become popular until there are popular web 
> frameworks that support portlets. What follows is a summary of the 
> most common web frameworks supplemented with information I discovered 
> elsewhere. 

<snip>

>
>
> I did not ask the obvious question of all these people: "When will 
> version N, with portlet support, be released"? because I know that it 
> is impossible to predict the schedule of an open source or JSR 
> project. All I can say is that if you want portlet support in your 
> favorite web framework soon, make it known to the leaders of the 
> project, and, better yet, considering helping to make it happen.

<Sigh>

I notice your list of web frameworks did not include Cocoon.  It does 
support portlets.

Ralph