Re: [Bacula-devel] Food for thought (Kern Sibbald)

[Kern S. <ke...@si...>]

Hello,

On Saturday 12 August 2006 23:41, Dorogi P=E1l wrote:
>  >GUI -- (The interesting problem). I'd like to ensure that Bacula *final=
ly*
>  >has a complete and good GUI.  Personally, I like good GUIs, but I=20
> don't like
>=20
> This is a big  and nice project with lots of changes in bacula code.
>=20
> So,first we must to know what we have or don't and what we can to do or=20
> not with that.
>=20
> We have:
> 1. director (ua commands and ua dotcommands),
> 2. filed (filed commands),
> 3. storage (storage commands).
>=20
> And what we need?
> 1. GUI,
> 2. Inerface (API) between GUI and bacula with events handling and=20
> callbacks support.

I think the callbacks can be embedded in the user part of the API.

> How we can do the event handling?=20

What do you mean by events?

> Add more signal type.=20
> The callback is  easier because if we have an event then we can use a=20
> callback function.

Callbacks are my proposed solution for commands that return a variable amou=
nt=20
of data.

>=20
> What can we do with director?
> So, we have  a nice director with user agent commands and dotcommands.=20
> OK. it's great.
> Just the problem is that the director user interface  was written for=20
> the humans not for GUIs.
> I think for the humans is great, but GUIs?
>=20
> For example if you write the 'status director' command you will get the=20
> human readable
> result. Ok, this is not problem. But if you set the debug to 200 with=20
> 'setdebug' command,
> and you write again the 'status director' command you will get the=20
> different result of it and
> how you parse all the type of results?
> So, the results of commands are not consistent and well defined.=20
> That are just some of the other problems.

Yes, this can be improved by implementing .status commands.  In fact, there=
=20
are already some such commands (you may not have seen them).  They are used=
=20
for the tray-monitor program.

>=20
> So, I think we have to specify which ua_{,dot}commands are useful for a=20
> GUI and specify the
> results of them. For example the 'time' command results  will be in=20
> ISO8601 like this:
> "1000 OK 20060812T192955+0100"
> and not the 12-aug-2006 19:29:55.
> And if somebody doesn't want to see the number prefixes (maybe the=20
> bconsole users) then
> will be a command like the existed 'gui' set to it on or off.

I see your point, but is this particular case, I don't find the second any=
=20
harder to parse than the first.

>=20
> And another problem that some command is need a real user intervention and
> block the another command to run.
> So, how can we paralellise it? Maybe the API create a new TCP session=20
> for the blocker command or we define two or more global
> sessions for it (status, control, etc.). And those dedicated channel=20
> just do what they need.

I don't think it is hard to create asynchronous commands, but it is not cle=
ar=20
what benefit it would give.  For example when you request something from=20
MySQL, you wait until you get the answer back before continuing.  I think=20
this is the same for Bacula.  I could imagine that for a *few* special=20
commands that you might want to be able to run them in the "background", su=
ch=20
as "prune" or "purge" when you know it will take a long time.  However, the=
re=20
are really very few commands of that nature.

> And, so on....
>=20
> Conclusion: We don't have a concept but we have a lot of unanswered=20
> questions.:))))

Thanks for the observations.

>=20
> Best regards,
>=20
> Pal
>=20
>=20
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security?
> Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job=20
easier
> Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo
> http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=3Dlnk&kid=3D120709&bid=3D263057&dat=
=3D121642
> _______________________________________________
> Bacula-devel mailing list
> Bac...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
>=20