The existing node APIs haven't been a focus for a good while now and
we've been adjusting them from time to time as the need has arisen.
Recently Ant has done some work to construct an API that more
faithfully represents the APIs that are described in the Assembly
specs

Now seems to be a good time to review the various threads relating to
identifying and configuring nodes and domains and polish the code we
have ready for the 2.x release (I'm not sure this needs to hold up the
beta b.t.w) so that we have a simple and easy to use approach without
duplication and the associated confusion.

I've been looking through the code base over the last day or so and
drew a couple of UML style diagrams of the parts of the infrastructure
that interested me relating to domains/nodes (made manually in an
Eclipse tool so are inevitably incomplete). I've updated the domain
page on the wiki [1] with these UML diagrams, an updated top level
diagram, and my thoughts so far. Note. I just pushed the original
domain content down the page (they are dated so you can identify which
is which - new stuff at the top under 2.x version2).

We have been exercised in the past about such topics as.
  - how many composites can a node run
  - should contributions be added to a node on creation or incrementally
  - how should we attach configuration to a domain URI
  - how should we attach configuration to a node

Multiple different answers have usually been offered and I think, in
most cases, we can easily accommodate the differing views without much
difficulty, e.g. [2].

I'm starting this thread without a specific proposal in order to
capture thoughts. Personally my ultimate objective would be a 3rd UML
diagram showing how the various APIs can be polished and can
cooperate. I'll start making one we can comment on if people are happy
for me to do that.

[1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TUSCANYWIKI/Domain
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg11205.html

Regards

Simon

-- 
Apache Tuscany committer: tuscany.apache.org
Co-author of a book about Tuscany and SCA: tuscanyinaction.com

Reply via email to