[Agentfactory-developer] this is seriously annoying me - attempt 201

[Rem C. <rem...@ho...>]

Hi guys,

As my first post, i want to have a quick discussion about the remote command 
service (RCS) for agent factory.  this service should allow users to 
remotely administer agentfactory platforms.

currently, af provides a facility to remotely execute commands from the APS 
scripting language.  this facility is an option that can be used INSTEAD of 
specifying a startup script.  while this is useful, it is not the same as 
the RCS.  the RCS service should be able to run in tandem with a startup 
script.  in addition, there are a number of operations that an RCS should 
support which should not be supported by the startup script (e.g. generating 
user friendly lists of active agents).  my goal for the RCS is to be much 
more than this.  it should also allow users to manage the platform services 
that are available.  in particular, i would like to be able to remotely 
start a monitoring service that can be used to present debugging information 
to the user.  i could then user the RCS to shutdown this service when it is 
no longer needed.  by including this facility, i am extending the remit of 
the RCS beyond the context of the scripting language (IMO: the scripting 
language should NOT support configuration of platform services - this is the 
job of the platform configuration files).

anyway, this is my opinion based upon a quick review of the existing 
infrastructure.  if there are no real problems, i intend to continue with my 
work on this service (which will itself be deployed as a plugin) and will 
show you a reasonable first version of it in the near future.

rem

ps here is a list of commands that i would expect the RCS to support:
connect XX
close
create agent
create service
terminate agent
terminate service
resume agent
suspend agent
show agents (nicely formated output)
show services (nicely formated output)
list agents ('|' and CR delimited output)
list services ('|' and CR delimited output)
shutdown
restart

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