[sorry if this has been discussed before...] I've put some thought into something similar in the CMS space, but didn't really realize that it might have been on the same path as the "Cocoon as OS" thread until just a few minutes ago. A Cocoon underlayment of sorts, but as a CMS. Let me explain.
Cocoon solves a very specific class of problems. I see it as a general processing unit for information that is recalled from external storage. Once normalized to a SAX stream by a generator, the GPU has it's way with the data. This Generator normalization is no different than the normalization of data coming in from a tape drive to a processor backplane. Once processed, the data is sent out a Serializer, analogous to taking it from the backplane and sending it to an output device such as a printer. But if this is true, is Cocoon an 8-way SMP machine without an operating system? I don't want to get too tied up in the analogy, but reapply the three things that Greg brings up about the OS: Process Management, Storage Management and Protection/Security. * Process Management: Well handled by Cocoon itself. It is able to handle HTTP requests with lightning speed, thanks to the sitemap engine. This could be supplemented with a graphical ability in the CMS for individual users to modify and manipulate pipelines and other relevant details of the process as well. Storage and version control of Cocoon configuration can also be managed as a part of the CMS. * Storage Management: If you are happy with basic disk drive storage, Cocoon is fine. But there is little in the way of middleware analogous to something like Veritas Volume Manager that can handle transparent versioning and volume control. Clearly this belongs in the CMS and not in Cocoon, but traditional CMS implementations always seem to hack the functionality for staging, usually requiring separate installations for each staging system. This is an administrative burden to keep operational, and something that a transparent underlayment could handle with ease. Integrated with Cocoon as a special Generator, the system would be really very slick. Exposing the CMS to Web Services or through EJB would be like putting the storage on a SAN, accessible throughout the enterprise. * Protection/Security: This ties into the users and workflow aspects of a traditional CMS. In the analogy of a processor, a processor initializes into supervisor mode, loads the kernel, and starts user processes. A CMS working with Cocoon could supplement this paradigm, with Cocoon as the supervisor / Controller pattern and the CMS as the Model. I see a few things missing though, predominantly what would be considered in the application/user space, and mostly in the area of content editing and manipulation. But by exposing APIs that are modal to ACL context, very powerful interfaces could be built in a secure manner. What I am wondering is whether such a CMS has any business being that tight with Cocoon. If not, a set of interfaces ought to be developed for them to couple through, but either way is this an attractive vision? There is a CMS group that has recently formed (http://groups.yahoo.com/contentmanagementgroup), but I am not sure that the goals of this group are going to be so tightly wed to Cocoon when it the dust clears. That's not commentary on their goals, but the converse is that I think Cocoon *deserves* this kind of integration and am interested in how to facilitate that. The power of Cocoon deserves a compliment that exposes it full strength, in a manner that allows both "superuser access", "user access", workflow management, integrated staging, ACL and access management, etc. It's not much different at this level than what I consider Greg might have been seeing, but just expressed differently. Comments? I see this as a completely parallel development to Cocoon, but one that might really make it accessible to the masses. And it would be a blast to work on! Brian -----Original Message----- From: Greg Weinger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 10:00 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [RT] Cocoon as OS One of the most intriguing and provocative comparisons I've heard about Cocoon is to Unix, in that it provides a host of small generic components that can be piped together to create new output. Cocoon is like an operating system for web resources. <snip/> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
