MAINTAINING PORTLET DATA CURRENCY WHILE MINIMIZING LATENCY

• US 20080040450A1
• Filed: 07/26/2006
• Published: 02/14/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/26/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Maplebear Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: SALCIDO, JASON A., APPLEYARD, JAMES P., FLORES, ROMELIA H.
• Granted Patent: US 8,468,217 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

Providing data to portlets can include a step of registering a plurality of portlets to determine a type of data required by the portlets. The registering can establish a portlet context for handling future data requests for the portlets. A type of information associated with one of the portlets can be determined. A data acquisition process can be initialized to obtain the determined type of information from a data source. A data request can be received for data of the determined type from the associated portlet. Data can be acquired from the data source using the initialized process. The data request can be responded to using the acquired data. In one embodiment, the acquisition of data from the source and the updating of the portlets can occur asynchronously, where a cache is used to temporarily store data acquired from the data source that is used to update the portlets.

Claims

1. A method for providing data to portlets comprising:

registering a plurality of portlets to determine a type of data required by the portlets, wherein the registering establishes a portlet context for handling future data requests for the portlets;

determining a type of information associated with one of the portlets;

initializing a data acquisition process to obtain the determined type of information from a data source;

receiving a data request for data of the determined type from the associated portlet;

acquiring data from the data source using the initialized process; and

responding to the data request using the acquired data.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps of claim 1 occur within a portal server remotely located from the data source and remotely located from a client upon which the plurality of portlets are presented.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the portal service is one of a plurality of portal servers configured in a cluster of portal servers.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the plurality of portal servers include a backup node and a primary node, where the backup node automatically performs the steps of claim 1 normally handled by the primary node should the primary node fail.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the plurality of portal servers utilize load balancing to distribute load received from a plurality of clients.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the portal gateway includes a registration handler, a master handler, and a data handler, wherein the registration handler performs the registering step, wherein the master handler performs the receiving and responding steps, and wherein the data handler performs the acquiring step.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the data source is a service provider of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and wherein the data acquisition process is a Web service.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the data source is a service provider of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and wherein the data acquisition process is a Web service.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring step places the acquired data in a local cache before the data request is received, wherein the responding step utilizes preexisting acquired data in the local cache.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the receiving of the data requests reoccur with a known frequency specified in the registering step.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring step automatically reoccurs with a frequency specified for the data acquisition process.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a second type of information associated with a different one of the portlets, wherein the initializing and acquiring steps use the data acquisition process to obtain the second type of information from a data source, whereby the data acquisition process aggregates data into a data set that is needed by the portlet and the different portlet.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps of claim 1 are performed by at least one of a service agent and a computing device manipulated by the service agent, the steps being performed in response to a service request.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein said steps of claim 1 are steps performed by at least one machine in accordance with at least one computer program having a plurality of code sections that are executable by the at least one machine.

15. A method for providing data to portlets comprising:

receiving data update requests originating from a plurality of different portlets, wherein each of the data update requests are reoccurring requests to keep portlet displayed information current with a data source;

for each update requests, establishing a data acquisition process with the data source;

automatically creating a data service configured to provide data needed to respond to a plurality of received requests;

the data service receiving a data set from the data source; and

responding to the different data update requests using information contained in the received data set, wherein the data service is a Web service, and wherein the data source is a service provider of a Service Oriented Architecture.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the data service repetitively receives the data set from the data source with a specified frequency that is asynchronous with the reoccurring requests.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the data service aggregates data in the data set needed for a plurality of the data update requests originating from different portlets.

18. A portal server comprising:

a registration handler configured to register Web pages including a plurality of portlets, wherein the registration handler determines types of data required by the portlets and a frequency with data updates of the determined types are needed;

a master handler configured to receive update requests of the determined types from the portlets and to respond to the update requests; and

a data handler configured to repetitively obtain data of the determined types from data sources, wherein the master handler spawns data acquisition processes executed by the data handler.

19. The server of claim 18, further comprising:

a portal data store configured to cache data acquired from the data handler, wherein the master handler utilizes previously acquired data stored in the portal data store to directly respond to the update requests.

20. The server of claim 18, wherein a plurality of portal servers are clustered to provide resilient operation should one of the plurality of portal servers fail.