Applications Messaging Standard

[John Taylor]

Hi Mike - just in case you think you're being ignored I want to  
mention that I only just got this email.

On 15 Feb 2007, at 18:18, Mike Fitzpatrick wrote:

> On 2/15/07, Tony Linde <Tony.Linde at leicester.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Hi John,
>>
>>> whatever solution we choose should be platform and
>>> language neutral.
>>
>> agreed.
>>
>>> Unfortunately, there's no way
>>> for Python, Perl and everyone else to use it.
>>
>> I'd be surprised if there weren't libraries for getting the windows
>> registry info - not sure what java does so don't know about that.
>
> I think even the suggestion of using the Windows registry violates
> the first comment above (can somebody point me to a Fortran
> interface to the registry?).   As has been pointed out before, the
> current .plastic file (and the suggested .ivoamsg file) is not the
> reason for your demo problems and so long as apps play nice with
> the host system, the use of dot files is not ground-breaking  
> technology.
> Likewise, using the java properties is nice for java, but....
>
> I also think we're agreed that a well-known file, a separate name  
> server, a
> "hub" or somesuch is needed and is an implementation detail.  For this
> exercise we should concentrate on what information needs to be written
> to establish the connection and pass messages.  Does the XPA name
> server do something the PLASTIC hub doesn't?  If so, do we need it and
> what does that look like in our new protocol (i.e. a dedicated  
> administrative
> message or some generic functionality) ?

This sounds sensible to me.  I can tell you what PLASTIC does: it  
writes a text file consisting of a list of key=value pairs.  They're  
written in this format:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/ 
Properties.html#store(java.io.OutputStream,%20java.lang.String)
Although convenient for Java programmers, I think this choice was a  
mistake as it makes life a little harder for other languages.

A typical file looks like this:
plastic.xmlrpc.url=http\://10.0.0.12\:8001/4200a0f243b49ebc/xmlrpc
plastic.version=0.5
plastic.rmi.port=1099

Can anyone explain to the group what XPA does?

John




>
> -Mike
>