Duran Harris wrote:I'm not quite sure what is the difference...I just know that RAD makes a distinction between the two in the page data view...
Well, if we were a typical bunch of flaming elitist techno-snots, we'd heap vitriol and scorn on you for depending on an
IDE to do your thinking for you. And kick your puppy dog, too.
But this is the JavaRanch, and we're supposed to play nice here.
Backing Beans are POJOs, and instance variables are part of the very essence of POJOs. Static backing bean properties are OK,
provided you realize that there may be multi-threading issues. Of course there are also multi-threading issues for instance members of application-scope beans, but that's because application scope is more or less the "static" version of
JEE objects.
If you're interested in the difference between managed beans and backing beans, search this forum. It's a question that gets asked a lot. But the short answer is that for most practical purposes you can treat them as the same thing.
I think most of the JSF/Portlet questions get addressed in the Portlets forum. Portlets tend to put constraints on JSF more than JSF puts constraints on portlets.