Very interesting!
I think this project is a great idea, though I share another poster's concern that we ought to strive to keep things as simple and monolithic as possible.
I also think that David's work on this so far has been really excellent, as evidenced by the documentation on his website. Congratulations! Obviously lots of work and thinking has gone into the architecture.
I haven't put nearly as much work or thinking into these questions, but I think they're important, so here goes:
- The XML layer adds a lot of complexity and I wonder if it pays off enough to be worth it. I realize that XSLT is suited to the job of translating from our schema to the platform-specific configuration files, but it sure adds a lot of complexity for this relatively modest benefit. Would we just be better off with some Perl code that knew how to do the translation for each platform? I don't really know anything about XML application servers, so I find that part really very scary.
- I'm a little confused about the exact scope of the project. "NetSage" is just the database that contains abstract configuration information, a web interface to that database, and the code that exports platform-specific config files. Right? NetReg and NetMon are CMU-specific tools that I guess you'll use to put data into NetSage, but the rest of us will most likely use the web interface, right?
- What would be really useful would be to see a punch-list of modifications that would be required to the existing Mon system. I think that would really help contextualize the project for everybody.
I am a fairly decent Perl programmer, but I'm afraid I've become rather more of a manager/project manager in the last couple of years. We have some other programming resources we might be able to contribute. If anyone was interested in taking project planning/documentation seriously, I think I could be useful there, and perhaps contribute some of our professional project managers' time, as well.
We also have extremely good web UI/design skills in-house, and our team is actually very good at designing tight UIs for very technical applications. I have checked it out with our management, and there is support for contributing some resources to this project, once we can quantify what the right way to do that would be.
Yours,
mjr
---
Matthew J. Rechs
Chief Technology Officer
The Content Project
1447 Cloverfield Blvd Suite 100
Santa Monica, CA 90404
v. 310-315-7171
f. 310-315-4141
http://www.contentproject.com
"We take the 'mess' out of CMS"
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Nolan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 7:48 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: Scott Prater; Joe Rhett; Matthew Rechs
> Subject: NetSage: Creating a powerful configuration interface for Mon
>
>
> As was mentioned on the Mon list a couple weeks ago, here at
> CMU we're
> working on developing a powerful web based configuration
> system for Mon.
> I've put up a few web pages about the project at:
> <http://www.net.cmu.edu/netsage>
>
> I'm CC'ing this message to the three people I remember
> specifically saying
> they might be interested in helping with the design or
> development. If
> anyone else is interested, please let me know.
>
> To those who are interested, take a look at the Timeline
> portion of those
> web pages (which is based entirely on the internal resources
> available to
> me), and let me know how you'd like to help with the project.
>
> We've officially started the project. Hopefully I'll have an
> SQL schema to
> put up on the site by sometime next week. And an XML
> document format soon
> thereafter.
>
> Unless there is any objection, I'd like to keep the NetSage
> discussion on
> this list, rather then start a separate list, so that we get
> as wide an
> audience as possible.
