[jboss-as7-dev] AS7 console, RHQ

[David M. Lloyd]

On 01/11/2011 04:00 AM, Heiko Braun wrote:
> I was looking at the proposal my alter ego send to this list a couple
> of weeks ago: http://www.rhq-project.org/display/RHQ/AS7+console
>
> What I don't understand is, why should there be an interim layer
> between the AS7 management API's (configuration, deployment, etc) and
> the web-UI?

Yeah.  I think it's really kind of crazy to focus on the architecture
without having acquired the basic requirements.

Before we go picking technologies, we need to know:

1. What information should be presented?  Be specific - at least, more 
specific than "everything".
2. How should the information be organized?  In domain mode, maybe 
multiple tree views (domain->host->server, domain->servergroup->server) 
depending on what information you're after; per server, maybe a basic 
tree that's similar to the server model layout?
3. How should the interface flow?  For example, perhaps I have a fixed 
tree view on the left-hand side that I click on to get at other parts of 
the system.
4. Performance requirements?  We ought to stipulate that on 2 or 3 
specific test platforms, the UI takes no more than, say, a second or two 
to fully initialize, and that we take measures to keep assets small so 
that page load time doesn't become a significantly detrimental factor.
5. How real-time should the interface be?  Are UI views updated 
dynamically as they change on the server, for example?

Picking tech before all of these questions are answered is putting the 
cart before the horse, to say the least.  History has shown that 
considering requirements as a second step has led to failure far more 
often than not.  We need to know what exactly we're trying to accomplish.
-- 
- DML