Patent ID: 7146563

Claim:
A portlet state maintenance method comprising the steps of: receiving a submit request specifying a set of form field data in a portal page comprising a plurality of portlets aggregated within said portal page; identifying a specific portlet in said portal page as a source of said submit request and forwarding a submit request and portions of said form field data associated with said specific portlet to a portlet application corresponding to said specific portlet; associating others of said form field data with respective ones of said portlets, storing said others of said form field data, refreshing each portlet application corresponding to said respective ones of said portlets to produce refreshed portal markup, and populating form fields in said refreshed portal markup with said stored form field data; aggregating said refreshed portal markup and portal markup produced by said forwarded submit request in a new portal page, wherein said aggregating step comprises the steps of: identifying specific portal applications requiring a dynamic refresh and determining a refresh interval for each of said identified specific portal applications; comparing each determined refresh interval to compute an earliest required refresh time; and, embedding a script in said portal page to trigger an auto-initiated submit request at said computed earliest required refresh time; and forwarding said portal page in response to said received submit request.