hiya,
for me as someone who's administrating a couple of
computer labs and a couple of research projects,
a 'general purpose management console' was allways
a must to have, unfortunatly there are just proprietary
solutions or others who don't address the need of
a 'general purpose architecture' [1].
in my personal view developing a framework for administrative
tasks whould be the first step to get into this.
so a snap-in- or applet- or a plugin architecture whould be
a design pattern which could be a core element of this framework.
btw - microcrap allready did this work by providing the microsoft
management console with its snap-in architecture.
allthough the idea was great, the implementation is a bit bugy
(but i never expect anything else ;-) ).
in my personal view including project related stuff into this framework,
whould be a mistake. if there's a need for such a framework it should be
neutral and finally every project group should provide its snap-in to
this framework - in other words the framework should just provide the
infra structure.
another note - as a MIS (management information system) paradigm says [2],
'providing information could lead to a sucess,
'but you should fear (raw) data'
in this sense, i think a management framework should not just be a
'manipulating system' for data contained in some configuration file,
it should als provide some information what's going on on your server [3].
this could be ...
- is my server (and its sub-components) still running?
- what is the average server load?
- are there any obvious bottlenecks?
- providing some informative stats ...
- alert mechanism via mail, sms
(german mobile phone/pager protocol) etc.
finally, i whouldn't think about implementation related questions at this
time.
cause this 'do we need a management facility?' question, is a general
purpose
question. allthough addressing the snmp protocol in the framework whould be
a good idea
(just a personal thought).
[references]
[1] Management Systems
----------------------
Microsoft Managemt Console (MMC):
http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/winnt/winntas/prodfact/mmcovvw.asp
Webmin: http://www.webmin.com/webmin/
Linuxconf: http://dns.solucorp.qc.ca/linuxconf/
[2] MIS Software
----------------
MIS AG: http://216.156.239.234/
[3] Monitoring Systems
----------------------
BigBrother: http://bb4.com/
InternetAlarm: http://internet-alarm.com/
SNMP: http://www.snmp.com/
bye
daniel
--
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin A. Burton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2000 9:04 AM
Subject: Cross project administration.
> So I have been doing some "out of the box" thinking lately about how we
> can better/faster have cross project Administration GUIs within
> Jetspeed/Cocoon/JServ/Tomcat etc.
>
> It has started to appear to me that many Java Apache project (that is
> Apache projects that use the Java programming language) are developing
> their own Admin consoles (Turbine/Jetspeed/Cocoon/Tomcat). Currently
> each takes a certain amount of development time and is a waste of
> resources.
>
> TODO: look at other admin tools
>
> - Assumptions:
> - Administration consoles are presentation mechanisms for data as
> well
> as input prompts for new data sets.
> - Security is a concern but should have the ability to be reduced
> when
> necessary (debugging, etc). Localhost restriction is important
> - should support multiple data types:
> - Value (single data piece with no name)
> - Property ( name / value pair)
> - Input ( name / value pair that can be edited by the user)
> - both Property and Input can be multivalued so you can have a
> 2D presentation.
>
> - Requirements:
>
> - Doesn't have any bulky components that need a large amount of
> configuration (Cocoon/Jetspeed)
> - Provides a snap-in infrastructure for objects that perform
> administration
> tasks.
> - JDK 1.1 and 1.2 compatible
> - JSDK 2.0 and higher Servlet engine
> - Servlet based, targets HTTP based projects only
> - doesn't require any specific page technology
> (XSP/JSP/Webmacro/etc)
> - doesn't require any technology specific that isn't compatible with
> all
> Apache projects (doesn't use Turbine Screens, Jetspeed Portlets,
> Cocoon
> Producers, etc)
> - doesn't require developers to build a UI in
> HTML/Webmacro/Cocoon/Portlets/etc
> - still allows developers to provide a custom UI via the getForm()
> method. Not
> recommended development though.
>
> Most of the code is done within Jetspeed.
>
> The Servlet is configured with a properties file. Here is a basic
> configuration:
> ---- Admin.properties -----
> admin.name=Turbine configuration
> admin.description=Configuration console for Turbine
> admin.block=org.apache.turbine.admin.Users
> admin.block=org.apache.turbine.admin.TurbineResources
>
> #properties can be provided to the blocks via a static method
> admin.property.turbineresources=/tmp/TurbineResources.properties
>
> ---- AdminBlock.java ----
>
> public interface AdminBlock {
>
> public String getName();
>
> public String getDescription();
>
> public void service( Input input, Form form );
>
> public void init();
>
> public String getName();
>
> public String getDescription();
>
> public Value[] getValues();
>
> public Property[] getProperties();
>
> public Input[] getInput();
>
> public ConcreteElement getForm();
>
> }
>
> ----
>
> So thoughts? From an implementation standpoint this should allow
> Jetspeed users to administrate both Turbine *and* Jetspeed within one
> UI.
>
> If anyone has any design ideas now is the time to speak up :)
>
> --
> Kevin A Burton ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> http://relativity.yi.org
> Message to SUN: "Please Open Source Java!"
> "For evil to win is for good men to do nothing."
> Open Source -> Join the conspiracy!
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> To subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
