Patent ID: 8782676

Claim:
A computer-accessible, non-transitory, storage medium encoded with computer-readable instructions configured to cause one or more computers to: expose an interface to facilitate communication between a portal application and a portlet container during runtime of the portal application, wherein the portlet container includes the interface and is separate and independent from the portal application, wherein the interface exposes one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) providing at least one method to permit the portal application to invoke a particular portlet to run within the portlet container, wherein the interface exposes one or more service provider interfaces (SPIs) providing at least one service to permit the portlet container to obtain information about the particular portlet, and wherein the interface exposes a web container extension (WCE) API provided by a servlet container permitting the interface to manage a set of web containers associated with a particular web application; implement the interface during portal application runtime to allow the portal application to execute the particular portlet; provide a coordination service as part of a communication layer between the portal application and the portlet container, wherein the coordination service coordinates distributed portlet events and public render parameters to entities within the portal application and communication between multiple portlets associated with the portlet container; generate a first action object and a second action object in response to a received request from the portal application, wherein the received request is to process an action request received by the portal application and the generated first action object and the generated second action object are generated based upon action parameters associated with the received request; invoke, using the first action object and to run within the portlet container, at least one portlet associated with the action request, wherein the at least one portlet sets at least one render parameter in the second action object; communicate a portal event between the invoked at least one portlet and another portlet associated with the portal application, wherein the portal event is relayed by the second action object to the coordination service; and retrieve the at least one render parameter from the second action object to be used in subsequent event and render calls.