Isolation Modes 

EP6.0 page builder offers three isolation modes for a Portal application:

·        EMBEDDED

·        PUMPED

·        URL

Related chapters:

Enterprise Portal Client Framework (EPCF): Client events.

Session Management: Keeping states of a Portal application.

EMBEDDED

The generated content for the Portal application is embedded into the HTML code of the page without transformation. It is part of the page content. The page builder has no control over the appearance of the content.

The EMPBEDDED isolation mode has following features:

·        The content of the Portal applications is generated on the server without additional requests from the browser to the server.

·        All Portal applications on the page are called asynchronous on the server and sent in one page response to the client.

·        Interactions with the Portal application and reload actions will reload the entire page. This results in flickering pages and lowers the performance, when all Portal applications are reloaded.

·        The Portal application window size is not controlled by the page. The window height parameter has no effect on the Portal application when in EMBEDDED mode.

·        The page builder does not add scroll bars to the window of the Portal application.

·        Server (PRT) events and client (EPCF) events are supported.

 

Limitations

·        HTMLB Portal applications, which have to keep the state of input fields by form, will loose the data of the input fields when other Portal application forms on the page are submitted.

·        Request parameters to keep the Portal application state, will be lost when other Portal applications also keep the state.

·        The Portal application is part of the entire HTML code of page. Therefore the script names of a Portal application have to be unique, to avoid collisions with other scripts of other Portal applications on the page.

·        The HTMLB ScrollContainer control with the height attribute set to 100% will shrink to zero height.

·        External content (to the Portal Server) is very limited and must be handled with special care (for example, resources and cookie handling). URLIViewsRuntime can not be used.

·        Portal application can only use the same codepage (charset) for the page (UTF-8).

Schematic

 

URL

The Portal application is in an IFrame, isolated from the HTML code of the page.

The URL isolation mode has following features:

·        The Page Builder generates the IFrame and sets the source attribute (SRC) to point to the URI of the Portal application.

·        The content of the Portal application comes in an additional server request.

·        Interactions with the Portal application and reload actions will affect only the Portal application itself and not the entire page. The result is a flicker-free page and a performance advantage since not all Portal applications are reloaded.

·        The page builder has full control over the IFrame size. The page builder can set Portal application window height to a fixed, full page or automatic according to the content of the Portal application.

·        The IFrame is generated with scroll bars.

·        The width of Portal application window can be controlled better, since the IFrame has a horizontal scroll bar when the content exceeds the window width.

·        Only client events (EPCF) are supported.

Schematic

 

PUMPED

The Portal application is in an IFrame. The page builder generates an empty IFrame. The HTML code of the page contains the generated content of the Portal application. The content is transferred on the client with the document.write() method, into the generated IFrame.

The PUMPED isolation mode has following features:

·        Enables locating the Portal application content in an IFrame without an additional server.

·        It is a performance improvement over URL isolated Portal applications since the first request for the page already returns the content of the Portal application with no additional request.

·        Interactions with the Portal application and reload actions will affect only the Portal application itself, and not the entire page. The result is a flicker-free page and a performance advantage since not all Portal applications are reloaded.

·        The page builder has full control over the IFrame size. The page builder can set Portal application window height to a fixed, full page or automatic according to the content of the Portal application.

·        The IFrame is generated with scroll bars.

·        The width of Portal application window can be controlled better, since the IFrame has a horizontal scroll bar when the content exceeds the window width.

·        Only client events (EPCF) are supported.

 

Limitations:

·        Rendering on the client (transferring the content) can be time consuming. Therefore it can be necessary for Portal applications that have a lot of content to use another isolation level.

·        This features is not supported by Netscape browsers. For Netscape browsers the Portal switches to URL isolation mode.

·        Relative script references (for example, <script src="..">) should only relate with their base to the Portal server URL. It is recommended to use deferred scripts (for example, <script defer src="...">) in the content because the framework does not have to fetch and substitute them.

·        External content (to the Portal Server) is very limited and must be handled with special care (for example, resources and cookie handling). URLIViewsRuntime can not be used.

·        The use of method document.location() in scripts does not return the correct location. It always about:blank.

·        Portal applications can only use the same code page (charset) for the page (UTF-8).

Schematic

 

Recommended Usage of Isolation Modes

Use the PUMPED isolation mode when the Portal application should reside in an IFrame and it is not connected with Portal Object Model (POM) events to other Portal applications on the page. PUMPED isolation has good page performance and control over Portal application window size. The window has scrollbars and is refreshed flicker-free.

If your content is large and the client rendering takes to long, switch to URL or EMBEDDED isolation mode.

Use the EMBEDDED isolation mode when the Portal applications on the page are connected with Portal Object Model (POM) events to other Portal applications and need to repaint themselves, through the server, according to client actions.

Use the EMBEDDED isolation mode also for pages (as the page property) and for Portal applications that have no other Portal application on the page (as a navigation node).

Use the URL Isolation Mode when it is required to present external content (not from the Portal server) or several Portal applications on a page that need different codepages (charsets).

It is strongly recommended not to use EMBEDDED isolation mode and PUMPED/URL isolation mode on same page.

Portal pages should have EMBEDDED isolation mode to save an additional request to fetch the page.

External content should have URL isolation mode.

Always check the functionality of your Portal application in the Portal environment. Execute it on a page in the Portal framework with the other Portal applications on the page.