Revision History

Date	Version	Description	Author
5 April 2002	1.0	Initial Draft	Thomas Schäck

Table of Contents

1. Web Services for Remote Portals 1

1.1 Description 1

2. Participants 1

2.1 ContentForPortlets Inc 1

2.1.1 Role 1

2.1.2 Relationships 1

2.1.3 Business Objectives 1

2.1.4 Solution Requirements 1

2.2 Portal Servers 2

2.2.1 Role 2

2.3 Browser 2

2.3.1 Role 2

2.4 End-User 2

2.4.1 Role 2

2.4.2 Relationships 2

3. References 2

Business Scenario: Content for Portals

1. Web Services for Remote Portals

1.1 Description

ContentForPortals.com is a provider visual, user-facing web services that plug-and-play with portals. ContentForPortals.com provides a personalized, visual, user-facing web service that provides an overview function based on previous user selections and/or user profile for integration in portals and links to their related web site that can be directly accessed by browsers.

2. Participants

2.1 ContentForPortlets Inc

2.1.1 Role

ContentForPortlets.com offers a visual, user-facing web service that provides an overview function for integration in portals and links to their related web site that can be directly accessed by browsers.

2.1.2 Relationships

ContentForPortlets.com offers their content to companies running portal servers either within corporations or on the Internet. Consumers who want to use ContentForPortlets.com’s visual, user-facing web services to add value to their portals select the desired services and bind to them to make them available to the users of their respective portals.

2.1.3 Business Objectives

ContentForPortlets.com wants to make their services available in a form so that portals across the world can find their services and bind to them with minimal effort so that the hurdle of using their services is low.

By providing the service, ContentForPortals wants to hook into portals to become visible to many users and wants that portal users follow links displayed in the portal by their service and thereby also visit their related web site.

Like the service itself, the related web site provides personalized content based on user selections and user profile. To make their service attractive, ContentForPortlets.com wants users to be able to seamlessly go from the service to their related site and back.

2.1.4 Solution Requirements

§ Maintainig Context: Allow the web site to which a visual, user-facing web service links to resume the context of interaction with the service in a way that is seamless and convenient to the user, i.e. without requiring the user to enter something in order to be recognized by the web site.

2.1.4.1 Technology Requirements

§ Transfer Context from the service via the portal to the End-User Client . In order to allow the web site to which the service links to maintain the same context as was used in the interaction between the service and the user via the portal, the service must be able to transfer at least an ID to the client that is carried by the client when following the link to the related web site so that the web site can retrieve the ID and use it to recognize the user without requiring the user to enter something.

o Note: There are several options

§ append a context ID to the link that leads to the related web site (backside: the markup cannot be cached independently of users)

§ send a cookie through the portal to the client that contains the ID (backside: will not work well because of cookie domains)

§ others ???