Patent ID: 7349949

Claim:
A method for facilitating development of a customizable portlet, the method comprising: receiving a request for enterprise content information and a username, password and token from a given client; identifying the given client's parameter selections associated with a given portlet; associating the token with a set of one or more user credentials using a credential broker; if the user credentials indicate that access is unauthorized, blocking transmission of the service request to a data service provider corresponding to the request; and if the user credentials indicate that access is authorized, negotiating a contract between the given client and the data service provider, the contract, based on the username, password and token, defining at least one parameter establishing a session length and at least one parameter operative to maintain a resource assignment for a given client; if the user credentials indicate that access is authorized, allowing transmission of the service request to a data service provider corresponding to the request and merging presentation information with the requested enterprise content information to form merged information, the presentation information being based on the given client's parameter selections; and rendering the merged information on a client computing device as the customizable portlet.