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

[Cristi U. <c....@sh...>]

> 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.

Sam,
You are right but practically CGSI runs with success on a local network
and only theoretically over the Internet. If the bandwidth will grow the
network latency issue will be overcome eventually, but the firewall
issue will be there for ever and ever. Web services make possible to
overcome the firewall problem because they are build on top of HTTP and
use XML (SOAP) to communicate.

> 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.

The firewall issue will prevent them from doing this and there is also
the standards issue. You said that originally you aimed to support
"parser
server in Kansas" model. What happened with it? 

>    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.

No, the issue is not very remote access.
I am a great admire of the GCSI and I think you guys did a wonderful job
with it, but because I like it very much I am interested to see how it
can be enhanced and made more flexible. In order to do this, one needs
to try to spot its weaknesses.

In my view standards compliance is a considerable issue to be taken into
consideration. One of the advantages that web servers bring in is this
standard the compliance. Currently there are two main implementations of
the web services standards (JAX and .NET). 

If the hub will be rewritten in one of the new language programming,
Java for example, the frame data structure will be rewritten in XML
(XSchema for example) and the servers libraries updated to comply with
web services standards then CGSI will do the same stuff that it does
right now, but it will be more powerful (better multimodal interaction
support, multilanguage support through UNICODE, real functionality over
the Internet) and more flexible because it will use widely available
standards.

cristi