Re: [Communicator-user] GCSI and web services ? What do you think ?

[Samuel L. B. <sa...@mi...>]

   It occurred to me and I'm sure I'm not the only one, that the design of
   GCSI will make it a good candidate to a Web Service based infrastructure
   with some changes perhaps.

   Today if somebody would like to build a GSCI based dialogue system,
   he/she needs to download the infrastructure, compile it, try to put
   together a collection of servers and finally write a HUB program that
   will integrate them into a workable dialogue system. Getting all the
   necessary servers could be a real pain not mention making them run under
   one's operating systems. 

   With the increase growing of Internet bandwidth and with the increasing
   popularity of web based services based on (JAX or .NET), GCSI compliant
   servers could be made available online by various developing parties.
   The advantage is that they would be upgraded and maintained permanently.

The GCSI isn't necessarily compliant with any of these emerging
protocols (or previous ones like CORBA, SOAP, RMI, etc.), but I still
think it counts as a network service. 

After all, you don't need to be running your components locally; you
can set up your Hub to contact them anywhere. I can run a Hub here at
MITRE which contacts one of your servers at Sheffield, and except for
latency and firewall issues (which you'll encounter with any Web
service), everything will still work. If someone wanted to start a
cottage industry running GCSI-compliant servers 24/7, I don't think
there's anything to prevent them from doing so right now; the "parser
server in Kansas" model is certainly something we originally aimed to
support. 

   Tomorrow maybe, in order to build a GCSI based dialogue system, one
   would only need to download and compile the HUB and start writing a HUB
   program that will integrate various GCSI servers available as web
   services...

In other words, "today maybe". Am I missing something? If the issue is
standards compliance, I can certainly see your point, but if the issue
is (very-)remote access, I'm not sure I understand the problem.

Cheers,
Sam Bayer