Applications Messaging Standard

[Tony Linde]

Thanks all. I agree that, as it stands, plastic is not supposed to be any
sort of message queuing system: if it is just passing messages around apps
on a desktop, the user can plainly see if anything has happened and click
the button again if the message didn't arrive.

It may be that Al's hack to route messages between different machines could
stray into Doug's distributed apps scenario and agree with Al that it ought
not to be part of any initial standard. 

> PLASTIC did right was leaving the messages alone. My application can  

I think you do need some standard messages but agree that the messages need
to be extendable, much as we did with the registry types.

T.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alasdair Allan [mailto:aa at astro.ex.ac.uk] 
> Sent: 08 February 2007 10:20
> To: apps at ivoa.net
> Cc: Tony Linde; Noel Winstanley
> Subject: Re: Applications Messaging Standard
> 
> 
> Noel Winstanley wrote:
> > Plastic has a lot less support for security, transactions, and  
> > other things that typically concern enterprise software. If a  
> > plastic message is dropped, or even spoofed or intercepted, it's  
> > assumed that this isn't the end of the world.
> 
> I think this is a good assumption, we shouldn't over-engineer our  
> solution. Things like quality of service and guaranteed delivery add  
> a whole layer of complexity we don't really need for the task at hand.
> 
> I also don't think we need support for (much) security, and I don't  
> really want to go near logging or transactions, again I don't think  
> its needed.
> 
> > Similar to a messaging system, a plastic hub doesn't really care  
> > about the content of the messages - the definition and format of  
> > mesages are left to the message producer and consumer to agree,  
> > whilst the hub just takes care of routing them.
> 
> However this is vital I think, one thing I really (really) think  
> PLASTIC did right was leaving the messages alone. My application can  
> get a showObjects message (for instance) and do whatever it likes  
> with it. It isn't constrained by the standard to do the expected  
> thing. That leads to innovative uses for the messages, you can't  
> think of everything when you build a standard...
> 
> > Plastic is good for quickly exchanging control info between 
> desktop  
> > apps. Message Brokers are good for, eg,  processing banking  
> > transactions.
> 
> Yup!
> 
> Al.
> 
> 
>