Re: [Embedlets-dev] [Arch] Persistence vs. Management

[Gregg G. W. <gr...@sk...>]

>> They are not actually orthagonal to each other, but rather very much
>> parallel. They are both variations on property set/get functionality. From
>> the Embedlet's point of view there is no difference between a persistence
>> property assignment and a Management property assignment.
>
>Actually I think there is a lot of difference, despite the rather superficial 
similarties.
>
>Of course, Property setting/getting looks similar....that's a pretty basic 
requirement.  And a
>SOAP/RCP based XML encoding (based on Web Services standards and code 
generators like
>Apache Axis) would look virtually identical.
>
>But keep in mind that Persistence should not be tied to a particular encoding 
format (like XML).
>The interface should be generic enough to support pluggable storage/retrieval 
handlers for any
>object. 

In our container, we originally used Java serialization for persistance.  But 
soon found out that it was difficult to make sure that SerialVersionUIDs were 
managed correctly.  We had create a properties based management system, and 
that worked well (via introspection, so adding a new property was just the 
business of adding a setter and getter).  When we started hating 
serialization, it was trivial to just write and read properties via the 
Properties.load() and Properties.save() methods, and we have never looked 
back.  Now, we also include in our container definition the ability of a 
module to include a GUI.  So, there is a method that returns a factory for 
getting the GUI.  This factory falls in line with the Jini ServiceUI, and this 
allows our status monitoring and management app to swallow the containers 
management objects and provide them inside of its GUI too.  So, if you just 
have our broker, you can use its management tool.  But, if you have the 
monitoring app, you can use it for management, and the broker is not the 
wiser...

Property set/get based management is a fine starting point.  Adding a GUI 
factory mechanism via the JMX client interface or remoting specs would be the 
next step...

-----
gr...@cy...  (Cyte Technologies Inc)