On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 2:09 PM, Marshall Schor <[email protected]> wrote:
> The proposal to add ${xxxx} kinds of things into descriptors is one way to
> specify the parameter being overridden.
>
> Another way is to have the properties file, itself, contain a direct
> specification of the parameter being overridden, perhaps using the same
> syntax
> we already use:
>
> keyname1/keyname2/.../keynamen/propertyName = value
>
> where the keyname1 ... n are the key names of the delegates in the
> aggregates.
>
> There are pluses and minuses for both approaches. Here are some:
>
> The same annotator component, using the same XML descriptor, might be
> included
> in two different places in a big aggregate. With the ${xxx} approach, the
> override would affect both, and it would not be possible to have different
> overrides for each one (unless of course, you changed that component's
> descriptor to, for example, use ${xxx} in one instance, and ${yyy} in the
> other).
>
It would still be possible to use the existing UIMA parameter override
mechanism in this case. In the aggregate that imports these descriptors, we
can introduce an overriding parameter and sets its value to ${xxx} in one
case and ${yyy} in another.
> Using the keyname1/keyname2/... approach makes it pretty explicit, in one
> spot,
> what is being overridden. The ${xxx} approach creates a bit of an
> indirection -
> it would be necessary to grep through all the xml files, whereever they may
> be
> located, to see what was being overridden.
>
>
In my use case I have a requirement (which I should have mentioned, sorry)
that I want to be able to have a single properties file that I can use with
multiple different aggregates.
Consider the case where I have one top level aggregate, AE1, that contains
two components, AE2 and AE3, themselves aggregates. Right now AE1 has all
my parameter settings, via parameter overrides. But sometimes, I want to
separately run AE2 or AE3 (for debugging, or for service deployment). In
order to do that now I have to manually make sure all the parameter
overrides that I set in AE1 are set separately in AE2 and AE3, which makes
things very difficult to maintain.
So, I thinking I could have one place where I keep all my settings (like a
properties file, though the exact format is not too important), and I could
use that same file whether I run AE1, AE2, or AE3. If the configuration
file has to specify the exact path down from the top of the aggregate, this
would not be possible.
-Adam
