Apps Messaging -- A New Approach

[Doug Tody]

The real solution to difficult problems such as security (or guaranteed
and efficient message delivery, etc.) is to layer an implementation
of an astronomical messaging abstraction on top of (ideally more
than one) robust, highly evolved frameworks.  Either that, or keep
it dead simple, and don't worry about these things.  I would suggest
assigning responsibility for anything hard like this to the low level
infrastructure, and not dealing with it at all at the applications layer
(except maybe at connect time).  I still hear people talking about a "hub"
which gets more and more complex, to the point where it is reinventing
basic messaging technology which has been addressed for the past 15-20
years, and impacts applications.  This is what "separate interface from
implementation" ultimately means.  It doesn't necessarily mean making
things more complex, as some fear - it could actually make it simpler
at the applications level, due to layering.  - Doug


On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, John Taylor wrote:

>
> On 30 Apr 2007, at 10:47, Mike Fitzpatrick wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi Mark,
> > 	I take your point and applaud your thoughtfullness.  We too have
> > multi-user machines and students, we also have large heavy objects
> > that
> > could be carried into offices to smash hard drives into little tiny
> > bits
> > to destroy the same data files.  I consider the likelihood of data
> > loss
> > due to msg hacking or heavy objects to be about the same and have as
> > much time to guard against each equally.
> > 	Did I freak everyone out with the message spoofing point or has
> > security been a major deal with PLASTIC for a while?
>
> It's something that came up back in September:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=Pine.LNX.
> 4.44.0609150930530.11448-100000%40andromeda.star.bris.ac.uk
>
> but we didn't really come to an agreement as to how serious the
> threat was and whether we should pursue a fix.  I seem to remember
> that back then I was arguing for the other side to now (ie, against
> security).  Funny how we get more cautious as we get older.
>