Show TOC

Background documentationIsolation Methods Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

The Isolation Method property defines how a page or an iView is encoded in a page, whether content is collected at the server or at the client, and how the page builder component displays the content. The value of this property can affect performance of the page.

A portal application can use one of the following isolation methods:

  • Embedded

  • URL

Embedded

The generated content for the portal application is embedded into the HTML code of the page without transformation, as part of the page content. The page builder has no control over the appearance of the content.

The embedded isolation method has following features:

  • The content of the portal applications is generated on the server without additional requests from the browser to the server.

  • All portal applications on the page are called asynchronously on the server and sent in one page response to the client.

  • Interactions with the portal application and reload actions reload the entire page. This results in flickering pages and lowers the performance when all portal applications are reloaded.

  • The portal application window size is not controlled by the page. The window height parameter has no effect on the portal application.

  • The page builder does not add scroll bars to the window of the portal application.

  • Server (PRT) events and client (EPCF) events are supported.

Limitations

  • HTMLB portal applications, which have to keep the state of input fields by form, lose the data of the input fields when other forms on the page are submitted.

  • Request parameters, which keep the portal application state, are lost when other portal applications also keep the state.

  • The portal application is part of the entire HTML code of page. Therefore, the script names of a portal application have to be unique to avoid collisions with the scripts of other applications on the page.

  • The HTMLB ScrollContainer control with the height attribute set to 100% shrinks to zero height.

  • The content external to the portal server is very limited and must be handled with special care (for example, resources and cookie handling). Thus, embedded isolation cannot be used for URL iViews.

  • Portal applications can only use the same code page (charset) for the page (UTF-8).

The following figure illustrates content generation in the embedded isolation method.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

URL

The portal application is in an IFrame, isolated from the HTML code of the page.

The URL isolation method has following features:

  • The page builder generates an IFrame and sets the src source attribute to point to the URI of the portal application.

  • The content of the portal application comes in an additional server request.

  • Interactions with the portal application and reload actions affects only the portal application itself and not the entire page. The result is a flicker-free page and a performance advantage since not all portal applications are reloaded.

  • The page builder has full control over the IFrame size. The page builder can set the portal application window height to fixed, full page or automatic depending on the portal application content.

  • The IFrame is generated with scroll bars.

  • The width of portal application window can be controlled better because the IFrame has a horizontal scroll bar when the content exceeds the window width.

  • Only client events (EPCF) are supported.

The following figure illustrates content generation in the URL isolation method.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

Schematic
Recommended Usage of Isolation Methods

  • Use embedded isolation when the portal applications on the page are connected with Portal Object Model (POM) events to other portal applications and need to reload from the server upon user's actions.

  • Use embedded isolation method also for pages, such as property pages, and for portal applications that have no other portal application on the page, such as navigation nodes.

  • Portal pages should have embedded isolation to save an additional request to fetch the page.

  • If your content is large and the client rendering takes a long time, use URL isolation.

  • Use URL isolation when you must present external content or several portal applications on a page that needs different code pages (charsets).

  • External content should use URL isolation.

  • It is strongly recommended not to use embedded isolation and URL isolation on the same page.

Note Note

Always test your portal application in the portal environment on a page with the other portal applications on the page.

End of the note.