Document: Spec Section: 10.3.3 Page/Line: New section Requested by: Mike Freedman Old text: New text: New section describing how userContext/Profile information is passed to resources.

Reasoning: Specification doesn't define how a portlet can transfer userContext/Profile information to proxied resources. As I don't recall ever discussing it I want to find out if it should be left as is -- i.e. an exercise for the portlet developer or we should define special http headers to carry this information. The problem with the former [current model] is that this information will commonly be carried all the way back to the client and appear in plain text in the browser URL -- folks may freak seeing their UserId of personal profile information in a browser URL. If we define specific headers to carry this we not only make it easy for the portlet developer as they don't have to encode/decode URLs but also achieve more safety as this information is only represented between the consumer and the producer. Note: if we go this later route we will probably want to add a boolean or two to the resourceURL consumer/producer mechanism so they can control whether this information needs to be past or not [optimization].

[RT] Good point on providing this type of guidance. There are significant security and privacy issues in having this information appear either in the URL or headers. Another alternative would be to suggest using an indirection in the URL which allows the resource to locate the information (likely an indication of the sessionID). This allows locating any information the Portlet is willing to make available. Should we also discuss whether cookies have to be connected back to the proxied resource the same as to the Portlet?