OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets TC

Web Services Remote Portlet (WSRP)

The original Call For Participation for this TC may be found at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200201/msg00008.html

The charter was revised by resolution of the TC on 12 May 2003, as recorded at http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wsrp/download.php/2239/20030512%20WSRP%20F2F%20Minutes.doc

The charter for this TC is as follows.

Name

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) TC.

Statement of Purpose

The aims of the WSRP TC shall be as follows:

  1. Create an XML and web services standard that will allow for the "plug-n-play" of portals, other intermediary web applications that aggregate content, and applications from disparate sources. These so-called remote portlet web services will be designed to enable businesses to provide content or applications in a form that does not require any manual content or application-specific adaptation by consuming applications.
  2. To harmonize WSRP as far as practical with existing web application programming models (e.g. Portals/Portlets, Macromedia Flash, ...), with the work of the Java Community Process (e.g. JSR 168 Portlet Specification), with the programming model of .NET, with the work of the W3C (e.g. XForms, DOM, XML Events, XPath, XLink, XML Component API task force), emerging web services standards (e.g. SOAP, WSDL, WSBPEL) and with the work of other appropriate business information bodies.
  3. Ultimately, to promote WSRP to the status of an international standard for the conduct of XML and Web Services based web application development, deployment and management.

List of Deliverables

The primary deliverables of the WSRP TC are specifications that consist of a coordinated set of web service interfaces and technical contracts that will allow businesses to:

  • Deploy portlets that are interoperable with portlet consumers (e.g. portals).
  • Deploy portlet consumers which can easily aggregate these portlets.
  • Enable portlet consumers and portlets to cooperate in customizing the user interface.
  • Enable portlet consumers to coordinate interactions with portlets.
  • Publish meta-information that indicates the portlet's capabilities
  • Find and exploit portlet meta-information.

As examples, the following things shall be possible:

  • Portals shall be able to consume WSRP portlets.
  • Portals shall be able to publish any local portlet via WSRP.
  • WSRP can be implemented on any web services-capable platform, e.g. J2EE or .NET.

As currently envisioned, the WSRP work will take place in five phases:

  1. A first phase to gather requirements across portal vendors, service providers, system integrators, and portal deployers.
  2. Produce an initial set of working drafts for the WSRP specification for review by the OASIS members and the public.
  3. Finalize the first version of the specification.
  4. Define a set of design patterns to guide WSRP developers in creating re-useable application components. In addition the TC will encourage implementations, test suites and interoperability guidelines.
  5. Design additional capabilities, including:
    1. Leverage emerging standards in areas such as:
      1. Web Services Security
      2. Registry Interfaces
      3. Relevant XML vocabularies (e.g. Internationalized names and addresses)
    2. Enable cooperation between the Consumer and Portlet in generating consistent aggregated markup.
    3. Enhance Consumers' ability to find portlets.
    4. Enable Consumers to discover and effect coordination of aggregated Portlets.
    5. Explore invalidating cached markup.

If the work actually does take place in this form, then it is estimated that the first, second, and third will take roughly one year to complete and that the fourth and fifth phases will take roughly an additional two years.

 

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