# Oracle9iAS Portal Developer Kit (PDK)
Overview of WSRP and JSR168 Standards - An interview with Michael Freedman

Creation Date: | July 12, 2002
Status: | Draft (1.0)
Version: | PDK Release 2 (9.0.2 and later)

## Introduction

Oracle is playing an important role in the formation of industry standards through two standards initiatives, OASIS WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portals) and JSR168(Java Specification Request for portlet API). You may have heard about this, and may be wondering like many others, what all the hue and cry about industry-wide standards is for? What is WSRP and how is it going to effect you? How do WSRP and JSR168 relate to each other? How is Oracle9iAS Portal providing an open framework and what can you expect in the future? To answer your questions about the standards initiatives that Oracle Corp. is participating in, read on and find out what Michael Freedman has to say.

Michael Freedman, Oracle's representative in the two standards initiatives, WSRP and JSR168, designed and implemented the original Oracle 9iAS Portal web provider. A consulting technical staff, Michael has over 20 years of development experience in a variety of industry environments including Xerox, Sun Microsystems, and the startups GO and Slate. He has worked at Oracle for 8 years on a variety of projects including interactive television, the application server, and the wireless portal.

### OASIS WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portals)

The OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a world-wide consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards, with more than 400 corporate and individual members in 100 countries around the world. The WSRP technical committee has been formed through OASIS.

According to OASIS, the objective of WSRP is to define an XML and Web services standard that will allow the plug-n-play of visual, user-facing Web services with portals or other intermediary Web applications.

The current goals of WSRP are to:

- Enable interactive, user-facing web services to be easily plugged into standards-compliant portals
- Let anybody create and publish their content and applications as user-facing web services
- Let admins browse directories for WSRP services to plug into their portals without programming effort
- Let portals publish portlets so that they can be consumed by other portals without programming
- Make the Internet a marketplace of visual web services, ready to be integrated into portals

The WSRP initiative has the support of all the major portal vendors, including Oracle Corp.

### JSR168: Java Portlet Specification

The JCP (Java Community Process) is an open organization of international Java developers and licensees whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits. Java Specification Requests (JSRs) are the actual descriptions of proposed and final specifications for the Java platform.

JSR168 is the Portlet specification that would enable interoperability between Portlets and Portals. This specification will define a set of APIs for portal computing addressing the areas of aggregation, personalization, presentation and security.

The current goals of JSR168 are to:

- Define common Portal metaphor
- Define a standard Portlet Java API
- Ensure interoperability and portability
- Enable multiple markups support
- Maximize the leverage of existing Java APIs
- Ensure compatibility with other technologies

Let us find out from Michael Freedman, a little more about how the two initiatives relate to each other and how they relate to Oracle9iAS Portal.

## Oracle9iAS Portal and Emerging Standards

Q: Michael, how does the WSRP initiative relate to Oracle9iAS Portal?

A: To put it simply WSRP provides interoperability between differing vendors portals and remote portlets written to run in a web services environment. Specifically, WSRP is defining the web services standard for communicating between a portal and remote portlets. Oracle9iAS Portal's web provider infrastructure currently relies on web service technology for this communication, however because there hasn't been a standard, it relies on its own proprietary protocol. This means that portlets developed in Oracle9iAS Portal's web provider environment don't run in non-Oracle9iAS Portals. Likewise, remote portlets developed for non-Oracle9iAS Portal remote environments don't run in Oracle9iAS. The interoperability of a standard such as WSRP overcomes these limitations.

From an Oracle9iAS Portal architecture perspective, WSRP fits where the current web provider SOAP interface sits. It defines the set of [SOAP] calls made from the portal to the remote portlet. Like our current web provider SOAP interface, it is designed for efficiency and scalability vs. usability. Again, like our current implementation, it expects developers interfaces to be layered on top of the SOAP service that implements this interface providing a simple, convenient, and usable portlet API to developers. In this sense portlet developers should never see [or need to learn] about WSRP as they will be insulated from it by another API.

Q: How does JSR168 fit into this relationship?

A: JSR168 defines the portlet interface Java developers will use to build portlets. When used in a remote environment, it is the standard interface a Java based WSRP service exposes. It is the equivalent of the current Oracle9iAS Portal's web provider Java API. This means that of the two specifications developers should focus on JSR 168. It will become the standard Java programming interface for portlets. WSRP is more of a concern for Portal developers that want to support interoperable remote portlet development in various [language] runtimes.

Q: What are the benefits of having a standards-compliant container interface?

A: Interoperability is the biggest benefit. This is a benefit to both portlet re-sellers as well as enterprise customers. Portlet re-sellers will now be able to build their portlets with confidence that they will run in all portals that support the standards . This in turn will give enterprise customers a larger collection of portlets to choose from, in constructing their portal.

Another benefit of standards is that developer knowledge is no longer vendor specific. In such a world, it commonly becomes easier to find knowledgeable developers and to train new developers as developer tools and communities come together in support of the standard.

Q: What is WSIA and how does it relate to WSRP?

A: Both Web Services for Interactive Applications (WSIA) and Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) are standards for visual, user-facing web services components. WSIA was initiated by OASIS before WSRP. It focuses on plug-and-play services that enable producer independent intermediary web applications. Portals are a specific type of such applications. The Portal is an intermediary web application that sits between the client [browser] and content [portlets]. So one way to look at the relationship is that WSIA intends to define the generic interface between any type of web application that utilizes independent content generators that run remotely from the application via the web services stack, while WSRP intends to define the specific interface when the web application is a portal. As these efforts overlap in many ways the two groups are joining together to define a common interface with the intent that WSIA components will be able to be used in portals and vice versa [WSRP components can be used in non-portal WSIA applications].

Q: What are the current schedules for WSRP and JSR 168?

A: Though still in the preliminary specification stage, current plans call for WSRP to be submitted for OASIS approval in December. This would mean that WSRP could become an approved standard by early 2003. JSR 168, though being conducted in a different standards body, has a similar timeline. WSRP is being developed using an open process. An interested party, though not in the expert group, can track the specification and comment on it by following the proceedings at OASIS. JSR 168, run under the rules of the Java Comunity Process (JCP), is more closed. In the JCP, standards are prepared by the expert group prior to public debate. Once ready, a community draft is published and a period of time is allowed for comments to be collected. Currently, the JSR 168 expert group hopes to publish a community draft in October.

The Oracle 9iAS Portal development is tracking the progress of these standards with the intent that support for them will be provided as soon as possible once the standards are approved.

Q: How will WSRP and JSR 168 affect portlet development in Oracle 9iAS Portal?

A: It's a good question, but one that can't be adequately answered until the standards become firmer. Currently, the standards are shaping up to be quite similar to our web provider framework. However, the specific interfaces are different. When the standards are approved, we intend to support the standards as well as continue our support of the existing web provider stack. This allows our existing portlet developers to decide when to make the investment of standards-based portlet development. Because of the functional similarities to our web provider framework, this transition should be relatively smooth and easy.

Revision History: |
Revision No | Last Update
1.0 | July 12, 2002

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