Glyn et al: I'm all for clean architecture, and lord knows we went through several phases of trying to do this during the project. As various new people have come on and left, we've lacked some common mental models of how things should work, which has in part resulted in a less than completely modular/elegant system design (though frankly I don't think what's there is really that bad, except in certain areas).
I really don't want to get down on you for being psyched about doing good stuff, Glyn, but I also think that this kind of message at this stage of development sort of contributes to the problems we've been having about team cohesion and timing. I really wish we could all pull together as a team and get 1.0 out the door, rather than going off in different directions pulling things into new shapes. It feels like we're all "Axis committers" working on 3 different projects and that is extremely uncomfortable for me. Related to this, I've also been sort of disappointed that people are putting in time to do all this refactoring and redesign on areas that (IMHO of course) do nothing for Axis' core functionality and getting 1.0 finished and out the door so we can start on the next version, when all of this becomes, I think, appropriate and encouraged. I think: - Bug fixing / interop is critical. - JAX-RPC compliance is critical. - TCK compliance is critical. - SOAP 1.2 compliance is slightly less important, but still critical. - Performance and ease of use are also in the fairly critical category, IMHO. I don't see much else (i.e. refactoring, code cleanup, etc) as being that critical right now, to tell you the truth. I guess I'm saying that I wish we could all spend our valuable brain and keyboard time doing 1.0-related things rather than branching off in new directions. Naturally, this is just my opinion and you should do what you feel is right. I'm sorry if this is less than perfectly written, I'm in the midst of a working group discussion while typing... --Glen ----- Original Message ----- From: "Glyn Normington" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:39 PM Subject: Axis Re-architecture > I plan to start some re-architecture work in a separate xml-axis/proposal > directory. I have discussed re-architecture with some other committers, but > few of them are keen to do anything prior to v1.0. I don't want to perturb > their progress, but I feel some revolutionary change is required (see [1]) > to position Axis well for the future. > > My aim is to build up a clean collection of subsystems along the lines > described by the architecture guide but with subsystem interfaces actually > represented properly in the code. I aim to introduce documentation and > tests as I go in order to maintain intellectual control and enable others > to join in. If this remains a one person effort, progress will be > relatively slow, but at least I may be able to demonstrate some facets of a > clean architecture to guide the future direction. > > As a consequence, my work on JAXM (or more accurately SAAJ) is regretfully > suspended but may need to be completed by others so that Axis can gain > JAX-RPC compliance. I don't expect this to significantly impact the overall > progress of the project as my enthusiasm for that piece of work was rather > lacking and progress was painfully slow as I hardly ever got round to > giving it time. There's not a great deal of raw coding to be done, but then > there is probably a SAAJ TCK to be passed, which involved negotiations to > get hold of the TCK and a reasonable investment of time to get it running > and more so to get a pass. I have committed a class diagram change into the > architecture guide which shows what mapping I planned for the fault-related > interfaces. This mapping is non completely obvious and certainly doesn't > match the current code (!). Perhaps a non-committer will step up to doing > this piece of work as a way of getting involved in Axis (hint, hint!) - I'd > gladly give advice and encouragement to anyone who is interested. Finally > regarding JAXM, I would like to apologise to dims publicly as he has been > the main encouragement for me to do anything on JAXM and I rather feel as > if I'm letting him down. I hope he'll understand my passion for pushing on > towards a clean architecture. > > Glyn > [1] http://jakarta.apache.org/site/proposal.html#decisions/branches >
