The PAF is the infrastructure for developers to create, deploy, and administer gears and their related communities, pages, and layouts. The PAF also enables portal users and administrators to customize the gears on their portal pages. The changes users and community leaders make to a gear are stored in a database. The PAF includes portal page layout templates and utilities for administering portal security and determining which gears are made available to users.
The PAF provides a variety of services to facilitate gear functionality and implementation. These services include:
Caching — Gear content is stored in order to improve performance.
Error-handling — Presenting helpful error messages in a format that reflects the look and feel of the portal.
Logging — Recording and analysis of user activity.
Navigation — Structuring gear page parameters in a way that makes pages readily accessible.
Nucleus components — Access to other ATG components.
Repositories — Data persistence.
Security — Login, logout, and user authentication.
User Customization — Accepting and retaining user customization settings.
