For M2, I'd like to see us support "Simple" but also another user,
"Curious, yet Afraid." Maybe that's just a nicer way of describing your
4-year-old.
To support this, I think we just need to be able report estimated
size/time and also a list of what else is coming along because of the
request (a little of the "why").
For the simple user, size/time is enough. The user was told to install
Foo, maybe they got an email, or the system told them they need to update.
They are going to do it because they are supposed to, and just want to
know if it's a big deal. Should they do it now or later.
A slightly more curious user may want to get an inkling of "how
heavyweight is this request" (size/time) with a little bit of "why". The
use case I'm imagining is that I heard my teammates talking about the cool
Foo plug-in/feature/whatever. I want to know what they are talking about
and I'm curious enough to install it, but slightly afraid. So I look for
it and, gee, it has a cute icon, it's relatively small, I think I'll
install it. But once I find out that it's going to bring a bunch of stuff
with it, I get scared and decide that I probably don't want it.
That's where the list of IU's may come in handy, and we have to know it to
report the other info.
susan
Jeff McAffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: Re: [equinox-dev] [prov] Ruminations on IDirector
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Perhaps we should agree on some workflows/user types that can drive this
discussion.
- Simple: For simple users/flows there are not that many choices. They
say they want to use Foo and the Director and friends determine if all
prereqs are available. Either they are or they are not. If the request
is possible, they'd probably like to know if it is time to: a) take a bite
of a donut, b) go get some coffee, c) have a bio break with that, d) head
out for lunch or e) go home. If the request is not possible, it can be
suggested that the user go off and find another repo that knows about the
missing bits but beyond that they are SOL. We have searched the known
universe and come up empty handed. There is also a conflict case where
installing Foo is possible but only if Bar is changed/removed. This gets
a bit advanced for these users. A very carefully worded simple question
needs to be asked (e.g., "How much do you want to use Foo? Rank on a
scale from life threatening to I thought it might be interesting")
- Moderate: In more advanced cases users say they want to use Foo and are
happy to have the system figure stuff out but once things are ready to go,
they want to snoop and have veto power. They want to know "why". These
are the "backseat Directors" or, for those of you with kids,
"Four-year-old Directors". These are dangerous people. They want to know
everything but at the same time, don't want to have to know everything.
They are pissed off by known unknowns and when they do know something they
want to be able to change it.
- Advanced: Like the moderate users, advanced users are curious and
somewhat controlling. The difference is that they are more receptive to
button clicks and work. They really do want to see exactly why version X
was choosen to when they know repo Y is so much more cool, why artifact A
is coming from repo W, .... These people are like driving instructors.
They are there with you in the car and have a duplicate set of controls
and that funky rear-view mirror. They can take over at the drop of a hat.
- Extreme: Then there are the extreme power users. For them, no amount
of control is too much. They want to BE the Director and Engine. We
should just open an XML editor and let them craft the messages that are
sent back and forth ;-)
So what does this all have to do with the current discussion. Well, IMHO
the M2 user should be Simple. They need a bit of feedback on what's going
on but for the most part no news is good news. Computing the size/time
requirements seem like the most pressing matter. I wonder if this is
something we can do with a sort of "dry run" where the director and engine
do their thing to figure out exactly what "would" happen but stop short of
actually doing it. The UI can then interrogate the results to see how
much download there was, time that would have been needed, ... and report
that to the user.
This is not to say that the planning object discussed is not needed but
rather the information it provides is more useful in the moderate to
advanced usecases. Other scenarios that will need this kind of function
are editing (validation, checking, ...), sys admin operations (simulate,
validate designs/jobs) etc. I agree with Tim that we should look to
separate out the building blocks needed to implement these functions.
Jeff
p.s., not sure quite how useful any of this was but it was kinda fun to
write...
"Tim Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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08/14/2007 09:00 PM
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Re: [equinox-dev] [prov] Ruminations on IDirector vs.
ProvisioningHelper-like entity
Sounds good. So if we can have an Oracle that returns a
ProvisioningDeltaDescription or whatnot that describes the various actions
that would be performed. By having this as another object, we can provide
additional services to help describe in a human-readable format the
operation as well as in machine-understable styles to allow serialization.
What would the input to such a function be? Would you still use a full
Profile or would you use a ProfileDescription object that can be accessed
off of a Profile? Having it as a separate object may also again further
user-understandable descriptions of the interface.
Tim
On 8/14/07, Pascal Rapicault <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If only we could have a console as a UI... I'm really amazed by the
requirements the UI put ;-)
I agree that it is interesting / mandatory to be able to show disk space
and things like that, however ProvisioningOperand is wrong thing to base a
UI on since it contains the information to drive an engine and this will
likely be more detailed than what we have now (Simon is working on a new
API for the engine).
As for the code code, the oracle I have in mind will share code with the
director to ensure consistency.
"Tim Webb"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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PM Re: [equinox-dev] [prov]
Ruminations on IDirector vs.
ProvisioningHelper-like entity
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Pascal,
I could see a benefit to knowing the full set of operations since some
users don't want their system changed without understanding the impact.
More importantly, it is interesting to be able to show users information
such as the amount of data that will be downloaded as a result of X, being
able to calculate needed disk space before performing the operation, and
letting the user know that selecting that one little feature caused 200mb
of extra stuff to be included.
The issue I see is that a lot of the interesting information ends up
following many of the same paths that are currently used in the Director.
Instead of duplicating that code into another object called an Oracle,
might it make sense to pull some of that logic out of the Director into a
shared object? Whether it's called an Oracle or not, I think there should
be one set of code that determines the set of operations to be performed,
and I don't believe that we need to duplicate that logic.
Thoughts?
Tim
On 8/14/07, Pascal Rapicault <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
Susan,
It seems to me that what you are after if some kind of "oracle" who given
a
profile, a bunch of IUs selected by the user, and repos would be able to
tell which IU can be added to the profile.
Unfortunately the "oracle" is not implemented. but something could
probably
be done quickly based on the code available in the director.
Also would you want to show to the end user what will happen?
PaScaL
Susan M Franklin
< [EMAIL PROTECTED]
s.ibm.com >
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PM Ruminations on IDirector vs.
ProvisioningHelper-like entity
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Tim,
I have the same concerns/questions as you pose here, you are just a day
or
so ahead of me....I am beginning to work on the UI that follows more of
an
update manager workflow in Eclipse. The admin UI in M1 forced you to
locate the IU you wanted and then select a profile. The more typical use
case, where you are looking to install/update from your profile, is my
next
task. I've had the same low level concern (but had not yet investigated
the code thoroughly) that you have to ask the code to do something before
you can know what will be done. I was wondering if the fact that you get
pre and post notification events was going to help me, but I don't think
it
will.
So I'm hoping Pascal or someone can elaborate on this issue, as I'm about
to face it myself and will have more to contribute to this conversation
in
a day or so....
>Currently the IDirector interface has two methods : install and
uninstall.
In looking through the code of ProvisioningHelper and IDirector
(SimpleDirector) I'm not sure as to the right way to >describe to the
user
the series of operations that would be performed in installing software X
prior to actually initiating the installation. I could duplicate similar
code to what is found in >SimpleDirector using the ProfileInstallRegistry
and DependencyExpander to determine what would be required
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