> > It would be really useful to take a step back, and first figure out
> > *what* a Context is, and *what* a ServiceManager. Let's leave
> > figuring out *how* to populate them until we know what they are.
> > We don't even know whether they're distinct things yet.
I have been following Adam's discussions with Greg and Daz with interest.
They represent real-world clients attempting to provide fresh insight to the
Avalon developers. And I agree with his approach to backup and look at the
concepts.
> I'd like to offer the following definition of a context:
> The Context is used as a means to provide data and a set of operations to
> the component.
> the type of data being passed is limited.
Why? The type of data should be whatever is necessary to define the
context, whatever that means. Note that little "c". I mean the *notion* of
a context, not a Context object as it exists today. Many things could
contribute to the definition of a context, including the particular profiles
loaded into the container, and application configuration.
> Every container, when it deploys its components (be they servlets or
> maillets or whatever), sets up a small block of data for it.
> I'd say that the Context is the component's way of accessing that
> data block.
This is a specific and self-limiting notion of a context. It might be
appropriate in a servlet container, but not in an component based
architecture.
Getting back to Adam's issue, I don't see that there is a great reason to
separate the *notion* of a Context and a ServiceManager. If anything, the
"data block" you refer to would be one of the things available via the
Context. What you can say is that at various points within the lifecycle of
a component, not everything that may eventually be visible through the
Context will be visible. So early on, you might have limited content
related only to container provided services, and then later on you would see
other services.
--- Noel
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