Hello Margaret, Thank you very much for enquiring about that! Our security vulnerability tool has flagged the Spring version, so the need to update is something we were looking forward to. But even with Spring 5 dropping Portlets, there are still some options. Were those options explored? Knowing that information will help us to tailor the message to senior leaders. 1) I can see the Spring Framework and a Portlet API is still available. What does the future hold for Spring Portlet MVC? Long live PortletMVC4Spring! - Liferay When digging deeper, I can see the various versions of Spring 5. x are supported. portletmvc4spring/README.md at master · liferay/portletmvc4spring · GitHub Also, while SAS is still using Java Portlet Specification, JSR-168 (2003) SAS Help Center: SAS Web Applications There is no need to update to JSR 362 (2017) portletmvc4spring/README.md at master · liferay/portletmvc4spring · GitHub Is this a relatively straightforward option with minimal commercial impact? 2) Another option is Spring Web Flow, which is still available in Spring 5. Spring Web Flow Reference Guide So, I do wonder about the feasibility of these options. As alluded to earlier, I believe there would have been time constraints in delivering M8. And M8 focuses on updating many third-party components, ensuring support remains and things can run 'as-is'. At a detailed level, while in option 1 the Development effort/ cost is just six (6) steps to switch out the framework values in various config files and to use a different class instead, it is no doubt far more effort/ cost to do those updates in the SAS codebase. Every environment has tech debt, etc, to work through too. That is normal. With Development not being as much a part of M8, compared to earlier Maintenance releases, it would still have been an additional testing effort on top of the already considerable required for other products, SAS/ Internt, etc. And probably a hard thing to advocate for as well. With all those things considered, I am sympathetic to that. And on top of that, the topic of dropping Portlets support was a while ago, in 2016. Drop Portlet MVC support [SPR-14129] · Issue #18701 · spring-projects/spring-framework · GitHub However, the subsequent impact of dropping the Portal is a sudden announcement for us and some others. And there are technical options available to accommodate the change. There always are. This will not be well received. It is a difficult message to share with Senior leaders, some of whom would have advocated for SAS instead and the update to M8. So, I want to ensure we have done all we can.
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