It has the look and feel of a portal with several portlets, but Cassar stresses that it is in fact so much more. "It's a set of very tightly integrated applications in a container," he says. "The problem with the portal technology is that usually the interaction between the portlets isn't there-they each kind of stand alone. They have to run in their own browser sandbox, whereas this really allows for the more tightly coupled interaction."
Ain't that the truth. There are some architects that go around telling people that their applications, in fact all applications, should be portlets or mashups or gadgets or whatever term we're using now. This started in the Java world and seems to be gaining traction in the AJAX world as well. Count me out.
Eclipse and Potomac applications are better examples. They're made up discrete components that can truely integrate together.
I'm currently working on enabling untrusted, cross-domain bundles in Potomac. My primary goal is to ensure that untrusted bundles can integrate deeply with the main application. We have to move away from iframe-like integration - what I like to call integration via rectangle. Flash's security model is essentially the same iframe-like model. In Potomac, we hope to enable better/deeper integration, while still being secure and easy to code.
p.s. I wonder if those JPMorgan guys have looked at Potomac? ;)
