The following section describes the refactoring that we are in the process of doing to the Portlet Container Open source Project (OSP) and the dependencies between the WSRP OSP and the Portlet Container OSP. The design of WSRP OSP to some extent addresses the possibility of supporting other portlet container and not just Portlet Container OSP.

The Container API is the common abstraction that the portlet container and the WSRP Consumer implements. The Container API abstracts the local or remote execution of the portlet and provides a uniform interface for the content aggregators. The Portlet Container driver which is a test environment for these portlet uses this abstraction and display content of local or remote portlets.

The Container Context is the newly refactored abstraction on which is work in progress, this abstracts the dependencies of WSRP (producer and consumer) on the content aggregator. WSRP depends certain functionality of the aggregator rather than just depending the Container API.

The Portlet Container which is the implementation of the Container API provides the execution environment for local portlets. The WSRP Consumer provides another implementation for the Container API which executes/routes request to remote producers and provides content to the aggregators. Apart from providing an implementation of the Container API the  WSRP Consumer also provides the following functionality's.

1. An implementation of Container API which any aggregators can use (where Container API is the exposed/public interface)
2. A Resource Proxy Servlet - Which is responsible for getting resources that a portlet refers too ( for fetching images, scripts etc. from the producer)
3. Some implementation of the portlet container test driver interfaces - This can be replaced by other aggregators.

The following diagram shows the web-apps that are deployed on an web container and some of the high level component dependency with interfaces that are defined in the system. The direction of arrow shows the dependency.