Conversations and Page Flows on the JavaServer Faces Platform
TS-5045

Not too long ago, the Web came out of its shell and became social, not only on social networking sites but also in terms of communication between individual page views. Seam and Spring Web Flow both introduce the concept of a conversation context whose purpose is to maintain state that pertains to a use case across a series of pages. Conversations help ween developers off the HTTP session and are a far more attractive option because they can remain isolated from one another. They also last on the order of minutes rather than hours, reducing the memory footprint on the server. In addition to a long-running context, conversations can be combined with page flows offered by each framework, which constrain a user's navigation path to a predefined sequence. As such, page flows can help reduce the complexity of navigation in an application.

This session presents the approach to conversations and page flows taken by each framework. It addresses their pros and cons, focusing primarily on how well they fit with the JavaServer Faces platform.

The target audience is anyone developing an application that involves a sequence of steps or who struggles with maintaining state in a Web application.

The session covers

• The definition of a page flow
• How page flows are developed in Seam
• How page flows are developed in Spring Web Flow
• Seam's ad hoc conversations