A system and a method for providing application flow integration in a portal framework. In accordance with one embodiment, the invention comprises a portal servlet, which handles all incoming servlet requests and determines whether the incoming request represents a request either for a portal page or for a non-portal page; and, a portal processor which handles all portal page requests passed by the portal servlet, and executes an appropriate webflow to update the current state of the portal page, depending on a current set of events. Each of a plurality of portlets may have an individual webflow associated with it.
CLAIM OF PRIORITY
This application claims priority from provisional application "ENHANCED PORTALS [FLAGSTAFF RELEASE]" Application No. 60/386,487, filed Oct. 24, 2001, and incorporated herein by reference.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is related to application "SYSTEM FOR MANAGING LOGICAL PROCESS FLOW IN AN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT; Inventors: Neil Smithline, and Sathyanarayana Giridhar, application Ser. No. 09/908,023, filed Jul. 18, 2001, and subsequently issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,051,069, which is incorporated herein by reference.
A design/compile-time, and runtime software development system that allows developers of varying levels of expertise to build enterprise applications with dynamic user interfaces. The system allows for building dynamic web pages which connect to data sources on the back-end, and which may be integrated into a portal on the front end. In one embodiment the system comprises an IDE having a design-time environment that allows the design of a portal application, said design-time environment including a Java Server Page design editor component, and a webflow design editor component; a run-time environment for execution on a server and that runs said portal application, said run-time environment including a control container and lifecycle driver component, a control factory component, and an application flow and state management component; wherein the system can be switched from the design-time environment to the run-time environment, to automatically effectuate changes from one environment to the other.
An end-user or administrator is allowed to couple portlets in a portal through user interface events taking place on the portal display itself. When the portal is displayed, if the user actuates a control corresponding to a property in a portlet, a menu of actions that can be performed with that data by other portlets is provided to the user. In addition to this "conventional" manner, an alternative manner of actuating the component is provided to the user such that if the user actuates the control in this alternative manner, the user is provided the option of making the chosen action "persistent," so that the next time the control is actuated by the user, or the associated property is otherwise produced, the chosen action is performed automatically, without requiring the user to choose an action.
The invention provides a method for collaboration between a plurality of associated portlets in a portal server comprising: associating each portlet with a portlet descriptor describing context names; forming collaboration groups of portlets having corresponding context names for sychronized contents.
Managing and securing process flow. A network server receives user data and retrieves secured flow data from the user data. A user interface is rendered at the client in response to the user data. The flow data is based on a web request from the client and identifies the process flow and a position within the process flow. The request initiates the process flow on a data communication network and the user interface has a hidden form field that contains the retrieved flow data. The client posts user-supplied information in addition to the flow data via the user interface for verifying the web request.
