I am searching for a pointer to the right direction for the following requirement.
We have a web application running on Tomcat, that contains ad-hoc reports based on BIRT. The main application has a few tabs containing various reports. Each tab contains a form based on JSF to gather user parameters and passes this to a BIRT web service (in the same web app) to run the chosen report.
There is a requirement to dynamically add more reports as separate applications that will appear as a part of the main web app e.g. as separate tabs - basically web app A contains a set of pages that run reports and once deployed on the container (Tomcat) will appear as individual tabs on the main web app. We cannot re-deploy the main web-app or change the bits in any way.
The basic idea is that once the web app A is deployed, we would like to present the JSF/JSP based form as a separate tab of the original web app, and when the user chooses to run the report, the page will gather the form parameters and pass it to the main web app to invoke a report using BIRT.
What approach is best suited for this type of requirement? Is using a Portal server and using portlets the right approach?
Or is there some other light-weight approach that I can explore? For example, one way I am thinking of is the following (very high level and still fuzzy):
- Dynamically register web app A to the main web app using a web service
- Main web app now creates one or more tabs and query web app A for content of each tab (I am still not clear how to display the content on the tab, but I assume that it can be displayed using a frame)
- Any request on any of these new tabs is forwarded to the web app A from the main web app
- Web app A gathers all form related data and invokes a web service on the main web app to process the request and generate report.
Thanks for any directions regarding this.