[jboss-as7-dev] Management Console Screens

[Dimitris Andreadis]

I know it is not easy, but I think you need to try and combine both models. The task 
oriented approach layered on top or connected somehow with an underlying tree model.

Every other management tool out there has some notion of tree view or resources, it's hard 
to get completely away from it, administrators will be confused. Instinctively, you look at 
the console and try to answer the question where am I now, compared to the full picture, or 
even, what is the full picture in the first place, that I can drill into.

I may be biased, because I worked on network management systems for a long time before 
joining jboss, where the concept of the tree is universal. Especially on bigger systems, 
like the one we are trying to depict now with the domain model.

On 11/03/2011 11:40, Heiko Braun wrote:
>
> On Mar 11, 2011, at 9:27 AM, Dimitris Andreadis wrote:
>
>> I think the task oriented approach is good but what's missing from the current layout is
>> some form for visual clue of where you are within the management information tree that the
>> domain model imposes, or a way to use that to navigate quickly to the particular
>> Profile/Group/Host
>
>
> Another thing that comes to my mind:
>
> If you take an engineering point of view, i.e. you know the jboss_7_0.xsd, then you tend
> to think in terms of a tree structure. But one goal with taking the task oriented approach,
> was to break with this mental model and offer an alternative, that's easier to consume.
>
> That's the reason I tried to explain it differently in the blog post, by talking about a layered
> configuration instead of a tree. The tree structure seems to be simple on a first glance,
> but it's not very good at explaining that configuration properties are inherited from other elements in the tree.
> I.e. system properties across profile, groups and hosts.
>
> This inheritance (or layered structure) also implies a certain order:
> I.e. you need to create a server group, before you can reference it in a server configuration.
> Now I don't want to take this discussion to far, plus I might turn out to be wrong, but we should aim for a simple
> mental model that works for most users. IMO layered works better then tree structured. But at the end one or the other need
> to be reflected within the UI.
>
> I guess this is the reason why I got away from using a tree on the left hand side.
>
> Ike

-- 
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Dimitris Andreadis
Software Engineering Manager
JBoss Application Server
by Red Hat
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http://dandreadis.blogspot.com/