Message contexts and Spring Webflow conversation scope

[Tom Zeller]

> Our whole message processing design for the IdP v3 is based on the
> notion of storing our message context tree in Spring Webflow's
> 'conversation' scope.  For reference, this is currently implemented in
> the WebflowRequestContextProfileRequestContextLookup strategy.

> The issue is that, by default, anything you store in conversation scope
> must be serializable (as in implements java.io.Serializable), because
> their default impl simply stores the conversation container object in
> the HttpSession as a session attribute.

What do you make of this from the spring docs :

"With the default implementation, conversation scoped objects are
stored in the HTTP session and should generally be Serializable to
account for typical session replication." [1]

Do you know what class in web flow is the default impl ?

> Since our whole v3 design
> depends on us being able to do this, IMHO we should probably do this
> work sooner rather than later

Just a comment that I think web flow is still officially
on-the-table-for-discussion until we increase our expertise and
experience, especially in a production environment, like Scott's :-)

> I propose that we get these impls done and actually tested in a running
> Webflow environment as soon as possible.  I suppose it's probably a Tom
> thing, since it's in the IdP, but it's also a critical part of the
> message processing design, so I can also take it on if Tom doesn't have
> the time or interest.  Would also give me an opportunity to get some
> hands-on experience with Webflow.

I would rather have web flow partners than fly solo.

As far as timing ... I switched from web flow to spring, sort of
waiting on Phil. Maybe we could punt on web flow until next month and
parallelize our efforts ?

How would this fit into your opensaml v3 work ?

I have a really rudimentary servlet working with web flow in my local
workspace, not sure if I really want to commit it to svn though. Let's
talk more and figure out how I can save others time with what I have
already done.

[1] http://static.springsource.org/spring-webflow/docs/2.3.x/reference/html/ch04s04.html