Main Components

The dialog model (DM) acts like a finite state machine.

It holds information about the transitions that are to be run, depending on all of the following items:

• The active step of a dialog. This step uses a specific portlet that is also referred to as source.

• Potential next steps. These steps are represented by specific portlets or pages that are referred to as targets

• Events that are exchanged between source and targets.

A transition to be run requires only a standard JSR 286 event that a specific portlet emits. We can therefore reuse existing portlets without having to change their code. It also ensures the UX Screen Flow Manager works in WSRP scenarios. For more details about WSRP, read WSRP services.

The dialog Controller (DC) acts like a generic component that can receive and propagate arbitrary events that are exchanged during a specific transition. The DC receives an event from a source, requests information from the DM about the next step, and propagates the appropriate events to the corresponding targets.

The dialog context (DCX) acts like the transient memory of a dialog. It maintains contextual information that one subdialog and the portlet that hosts that subdialog passes to succeeding subdialogs and the corresponding portlets. In other words, it makes information that a subdialog already provided available for all succeeding subdialogs.

We can interconnect multiple user interface artifacts, usually portlets, as parts of a single screen flow through the UX Screen Flow Manager. These portlets can be developed by different teams or even third-party vendors. For more information, read Actors and roles. In that case event-driven inter-portlet communication might not work, as the developers who wrote the portlets might not mutually align the events their portlets use. To enable portlets that are not compatible, so-called Mappers can transform events to enable such portlets to communicate. For more information, read Event mappers.

Parent Terminology and main and user interface components

Related concepts:

Actors and Roles
Event Mappers