This page describes the control flow of a typical portal request that makes use of Adaptive Tags.

1. First, the portal page requests portlet data from the Transformer.
2. The Transformer retrieves the requested portlets from the remote portlet servers. Native UI tags, such as JSP Tags or .NET web controls, are processed on the remote server before the HTML is returned to the Transformer.
3. The Transformer converts the HTML into markup data including both HTML and Adaptive Tags. This markup data is passed to the Tag Transformation Engine, which processes the tags and converts them into standard HTML.
4. Finally, the HTML is returned to the portal page where it is displayed to the end user.

The Tag Transformation Engine converts markup data from the Transformer into a tree of HTML and Adaptive Tags. The Engine moves through the tree and outputs HTML and processes the tags. When a tag is processed, it can cause all of its child nodes to be processed, or it can skip that entire section of the tree.

The figure below shows an example of a tree. In this example, when the choose tag is executed, it determines whether or not the current user matches the conditions in the choose clause. If it does, the When tag will display the HTML inside the tag. If not, the otherwise tag will display its HTML.

For details on these tags, see Logic Adaptive Tag Library (pt:logic).