[OpenSTA-devel] Alternate GUI for OpenSTA?

[<co...@go...>]

I have followed OpenSTA closely for a pretty long time and was involved in
conversations on this list a few years back about the future development of
OpenSTA.  We discussed lots of issues and possible future directions.

Since then, no major shifts have happened and developer involvement seems to be
ultra low.

The GUI in OpenSTA is built using MFC and is showing its age.  Its editing, test
setup, and execution are adequate.. but its monitoring, results analysis, and
graphing abilites are far behind what proprietary rivals offer and are also
very brittle.  Furthermore, the fact that its development environment is
complex and proprietary may drive prospective contributors away.

However, a strong point of OpenSTA is its fast and scalable load generating
core.  This is accessible in a batch mode via the command line.

info here:
http://portal.opensta.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpWiki&file=index&pagename=OstaCommandLine

some related utilities:
http://www.trickytools.com/php/opensta.php

For results reporting, OpenSTA also logs to csv files that you can process.  So
basically OpenSTA's core can be driven without its existing GUI.. both
execution and results analysis.  

As a proof of concept, I built a Python based framework for OpenSTA results
analysis.  It parses timers, generates time series, runs calculations, and
graphs results that come out of OpenSTA.

I would like to post a document showing my results analysis module in Python.
Would people be interested in seeing it?  

As a next step, a wrapper could be built around the CLI and a new GUI for test
execution and management could be developed.  Eventually all UI modules couldbe
con verted over, while leaving the core of OpenSTA in tact.

As to why Python.. the goal I have in mind is to create a flexible open source
UI written in a dynamic object oriented language that has a lot of existing
module/library support, can integrate well with a C++ execution core, and can
be developed using all Free tools.  Another reason is an eye towards future
cross-platform compatibilty.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this idea?  From what I can tell it seems
very feasible.  

-Corey Goldberg









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