Hi Simon,
On 1/24/07, Simon Laws <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Andy
Understanding how we fit into the Web2.0 space has got to be a good thing. I
also like the idea of providing an example that has some useful purpose. So
the application you have outlined gets my vote.
In terms of providing examples and samples generally...
1/ It strikes me that if we can start building up a library of useful
components then we have a better chance of producing examples more quickly
in the future. You never know, people may want to adapt some of our example
components (they are unlikely to want to adapt the calculator components
:-). I'm particularly attracted by your Alert Checker components which I can
imagine being more generally useful. When we think about how to build this
example can we set it up so that the components are explicitly reusable. I.e.
this could simply mean constructing each (group of ) reusable components in
a separate directory. (The composites we have in the current CPP samples
seem to collect all of their components into one place by composite).
Agreed - I'm trying to make the components nice and modular so that we
can show components easily being replaced by other components or
reused in different configurations.
2/ I would also like to be able to say what problem we are solving from a
user/business perspective. You would expect this to be all of the usual
things that we hold up as good things about SOAs but I think we can give
some life to this through examples like the one you have suggested. So for
example, If I were running an organisation that has a static web site
currently, I might be asking questions like How do I...
- make my web site more attractive to customers by making it more dynamic
- present a view of various back end systems
- reduce the amount of person time spent updating the web site.
- reduce the technology gulf (and hence isolation etc..) between my back
end developers and front end developers
- reuse work I have done on previous efforts more effectively
- consistently aggregate content from that business I have just acquired.
. etc, etc.
An article, or some kind of FAQ page that answers these questions
using SCA might be a really persuasive bit of marketing for us!
There are many many more questions that people will ask. Now, on the face of
it, none of these say anything about SCA specifically but we are proposing
that SCA, as a programming model, provides a good basis for solving these
problems. It doesn't do it alone, i.e. there is no magic bullet, but it's an
important part of the mix. So what would be interesting as we develop
examples like this is to document exactly what questions we think we are
answering. It's great if we produce an interesting Web2.0 app but much
better if, having done it, we can answer, in layman's terms, the question of
why it is better to do it with SCA rather than the 1000s of other ways it
can be done. I imagine that there is a finite set of compelling value
statements that we can focus on. I don't have a list to hand but I'm keen to
help here collecting these "success stories"/value statements. Knowing what
we are trying to show is a good input into the kind of examples we choose to
build.
In a little more detail.
I would put more emphasis on the a variety of protocols in the display
composite as it would be nice to extend this app to include an AJAX style
front end. It would be good to do the display composite in PHP. So, for
example, the most useful format for the alerts would be a feed in it's own
right. We already have some feed samples in PHP so we could reuse this. I'll
think a bit more about this and give some pointers.
That would be cool - the Alerter Composite provides the data as a
REST/XML service which could be consumed via AJAX calls, but exposing
it as an RSS/Atom feed would be another good addition to the display
composite.
What is the AlertConfig component doing. I will be useful to show in an
example how components (feeds) can be included/excluded. Will this be a
static configuration exercise in the first instance or this there intended
to be some dynamic element to it, i.e. you can imagine that having a RSS
feed reader, or not, would be statically configured while the specific feeds
to be read would be dynamic.
The AlertConfig component holds the configuration/state details needed
for each checker component - such as a pop server, username and
password for the POP Checker component, and an RSS feed URL and last
checked time for the RSS Checker. The checkers are designed to be
reusable, so the config could hold details for n different RSS feeds,
all of which are checked using the same component.
Cheers
Andy
On 1/22/07, haleh mahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi Andy,
>
> This is an interesting technology sample that demonstrates various
> capabilities that Tuscany offers.
>
> It would be good to get user feedback on this as well.
>
> Haleh
>
> On 1/19/07, Andrew Borley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > One of the things we thought would be good to include in the next
> > release of Tuscany C++ was "some kind of Web 2.0 sample" that would
> > show the various functionality of Tuscany C++ (and perhaps Tuscany
> > Java and SCA/SDO for PHP too) all working together in one app.
> > I've had a think around this and come up with the following idea that
> > I'm throwing open for abuse/ideas/development/etc!
> >
> > Global Alerter
> > A feed-reader style webapp that aggregates various sources of changing
> > data into a series of "alerts" that are displayed in, and
> > automatically updated via AJAX calls from, a web page. Alert sources
> > include RSS/Atom news feeds, POP3/IMAP email, NNTP newsgroups, SOAP
> > services (such as stockquotes).
> >
> > See the attached png for the initial SCA diagram (I've also put it up
> > at [1] if the mail-list doesn't let png's through) for a bit more
> > detail. This shows some of the power that SCA and Tuscany provides:
> > - the 2 composites could run in separate containers or even different
> > SCA runtimes (say HTTPD/PHP with SCA_SDO for the Display Composite and
> > HTTPD/Tuscany C++ for the Alerter Composite)
> > - we could show extensibility by adding extra Checker components for
> > other data sources (such as a component that checks for changes in a
> > specific web page)
> > - we could show re-use of components by using the Web Service Checker
> > to call a stockquote service and a weather forecast service.
> > - we can use different languages to implement the components
> >
> > It would be nice if the web front end could also show what is
> > happening under the covers - perhaps by displaying the SCA diagram and
> > highlighting which pieces are being called when the user chooses to
> > update the alerts from a particular data source.
> >
> > So, any ideas/thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Andy
> >
> > [1] http://people.apache.org/~ajborley/web2demo.png
> >
> >
> >
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>
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