Asynchronously rendering interoperable remote portlets

Under current synchronous portal rendering mechanism, a user has to wait until all the portlets are ready for the next interaction. In the case of consuming remote portlets with Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) specification, the situation can be worse. To improve user experiences, an asynchronous mechanism is proposed in this paper leveraging popular Ajax technology. We also discussed several issues such as URL rewriting, cross-portlet interaction, security, etc. that have to be considered while applying asynchronous mechanism, and built up a prototype to prove that using Ajax in rendering remote portlets while providing cross-portlet interaction capability is feasible. © 2007 IEEE.