Re: Perspective: XML's ticking time bomb

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

>>>>> Glenn Waters writes:

Glenn> We do not need common models to start. Having just the above
Glenn> framework will allow for access to information that is easy to
Glenn> parse and perhaps easy to use -- a big step over where we are
Glenn> today with CLI, SysLog, etc. which are difficult and error
Glenn> prone to parse.

In my view of the world, it is essential to distinguish between human
user interfaces and programmatic interfaces. An almost orthogonal
criteria is whether these interfaces are based standardized data
models or proprietary data models.

The CLI is a human user interface which usually the developer hacks
together since without it, it is almost impossible to test a new
feature. Similar with syslog: The developer instruments the code with
syslog calls in those places where he feels some situation needs to be
reported for debugging purposes and so on.

Programmatic management interfaces such as MIBs/PIBs/... are usually
developed after the CLI and syslog because first the new functionality
must be in place. And this is in my view of the world the main reason
why programmatic interfaces always are always behind the CLI/syslog
interfaces (and note that it is just irrelevant here whether the
programmatic interface is based on a common data model or a
proprietary one).

So to really make a difference, vendors have to ensure that the human
user interface and the programmatic interface are developed at the
same time and are consistent. This can be achieved by e.g. layering
the CLI on top of a programmatic interface (or the other way round) or
by having the CLI and any programmatic interface go through a common
"resource manager".  The key observation here is that timeliness and
consistency of the interfaces is basically a software architecture
problem. And to solve this problem, throwing in XML won't help.

The other theoretic option would be to just have one interface which
works equally well as a human interface and as a programmatic
interface.  My personal opinion however is that this approach won't
fly.

In other words, in order for a new XML based technology to be really
successful, it is crucial that vendors are willing to rethink whether
their internal software architecture and development processes work
well. If XML will just be treated as another additional programmatic
interface, then the same problems we have with other programmatic
interfaces will show up down the road.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder    <http://www.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/schoenw/>



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