Spring 2.0 introduces Portlet MVC Framework. For more details about the portlet framework read the sun’s documentation. The Portlet MVC framework is a mirror image of the Web MVC framework.

The main way in which portlet workflow differs from servlet workflow is that the request to the portlet can have two distinct phases: the action phase and the render phase. The action phase is executed only once and is where any ‘backend’ changes or actions occur, such as making changes in a database. The render phase then produces what is displayed to the user each time the display is refreshed. The critical point here is that for a single overall request, the action phase is executed only once, but the render phase may be executed multiple times. This provides (and requires) a clean separation between the activities that modify the persistent state of your system and the activities that generate what is displayed to the user.

http://www.springframework.org/docs/reference/portlet.html

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