When choosing whether to use pipeline invocation or servlet bean invocation to retrieve content from the Assembler, it is useful to keep in mind the following considerations:
The pipeline servlet operates at an HTTP request level. HTTP requests often map to entire pages in Experience Manager, making such pages good candidates for pipeline servlet invocation.
The servlet bean is useful when only a portion of a page needs to be managed by the Experience Manager user. This type of page can use the servlet bean to request that portion’s content from the Assembler.
For performance reasons, Oracle recommends minimizing the number of servlet bean invocations on any given page.
Cartridges that are intended to work on the same result set should all be retrieved during the same Assembler invocation, regardless of the invocation type you use. For example, the search results, breadcrumbs, and navigation cartridges should all return content that is based on the same results set.
If your business users need the ability to create their own page URLs, for example,
/browse/WinterSale, those pages should be managed in Experience Manager and they should be retrieved via pipeline servlet invocation to ensure that the URL is recognized as an Assembler URL and properly directed to the Assembler. Conversely, if you have pages whose URLs must not be edited, you can manage those pages as Nucleus-driven pages and provide access to any configurable content in Experience Manager through a servlet bean.
