On Tuesday, Sep 9, 2003, at 17:10 Europe/London, n. alex rupp wrote:
I would like to create a front end for this process in the web console. I
was thinking about it last night (before I read this morning's encouraging
posts). Richard Monson-Haefel wrote about it a while back--easing the
process of deployment by removing the need for people to work directly with
the deployment descriptors. His suggestions fall perfectly in line with
what Jeremy's written here.
I think making the deployment data persist is a great idea. It could also
allow multiple deployment profiles for each application (higher / lower
security, etc).
I think it's an excellent idea to get the web console to generate the deployment -- RMH's idea was that you shouldn't need to know that an XML file is even there.
However, it doesn't necessarily mean that it can't generate the XML, rather than a binary-compatible format that Jeremy was suggesting. An XML document will always be more portable between versions than a generated bunch of code, because when bugs are fixed in the latter you have to regenerate, whereas with an XML file you don't.
So I think the front-end console can hide /whatever/ format is required and this will be a Good Thing. I just don't personally see the benefit of a binary format outweighing the downsides.
Aled.
