Simon is a hands-on software architect who works within 
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[Coding the Architecture] Just a short note to plug a handful of sessions that Kevin and I are presenting at the upcoming Software Architect 2008 conference, 3rd-5th June, London. 1. Coding the Architecture : From Developer to Architect The first is a re-run of our ...
Portlet Specification : What Is Real and What Comes Next?
Earlier I went to a session about the JSR-168 Portlet specification and this is something that I've not looked at in any detail. I was a little confused at first because they kept saying how they had extended the Servlet container in building the portlet container. It turns out that the reference implementation is actually a webapp that has some framework code to provide the portlet services. This stuff is pretty smart and I can see how it should simplify web application development in some cases. The session itself was really very good, both in terms of delivery and content.
I'm currently wondering whether there is benefit in providing a basic portlet implementation (or embedding the RI) into Pebble, allowing users to extend and plugin new functionality such as RSS aggregators, etc. Something to think about on the plane home perhaps.