>>>>> "Alva" == Alva Couch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<Puppet discussion elided> Alva> I *was* planning on preparing a presentation on "what we can Alva> learn from service architectures" but I am leery of doing that Alva> now, given the current thread of discussion. It would seem Alva> that anything I can possibly say is "theory" and therefore not Alva> of much interest. I have little time and no wish to force Alva> myself upon people. My aim is only to serve, and if keeping Alva> quiet about the forces gathering that promise to transform our Alva> discipline in the next few years is "service", then I am Alva> willing to perform that "service". :) I think that this sort of discussion would be of great interest to those interested in the research category. I know I would be interested in the discussion. Alva> Frankly, once the features of a tool are discussed, what is Alva> there left to discuss but the future? Where are the case Alva> studies? Who should we invite who can lend "practical" Alva> insight? What data should we study? I think there are two ways that discussion of current tools can be interesting. I don't think that features are necessarily so interesting, but the design decisions and goal can be fascinating. For example, many of bcfg2's compelling features are rooted in design decision to base everything around a validation model. While the features are compelling, the real contribution it has to offer is that if you build a system around validation, you have these additional options available with which you can build interesting functionality. I would say on the research side, the why is as, if not more, important than the what. Secondly, I think that many configuration management papers are missing practical grounding. (ie, they have the "I built this thing", but are missing the "the users hated it for what we intended, but loved it for something completely different") For example, giving the bcfg2 user base the above features has proven quite interesting, as they've starting using the tools in ways I never would have predicted. I find these cases to be more telling than the cases where we implemented a solution to a problem and the users used it precisely as we had intended. -nld _______________________________________________ lssconf-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.inf.ed.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/lssconf-discuss
