perfsonar development work

["Luchesar V. ILIEV" <>]

Jeff,

Since I trust you've read my proposal carefully, I'd rather blame myself 
for not having been able to explain it clearly and correctly enough, for 
which I apologize.

Jeff W. Boote wrote:
> I can see the desire for a simple generic test request. However, the 
> resulting response should be equally simple. The current proposal does 
> not fit that in my opinion.
>
> For a simple generic case, I would expect a result to only have a simple 
> result code and a human readable status message with more details.

1) Regardless of what a service does while self-testing, there are only 
two possible result codes: "success" and "error". "Success" is defined 
as the result where all internal checks have passed successfully. Any 
single error encountered will result in error response.

2) The datum-s in the data element hold all relevant messages, _in_ 
human-readable format: exactly the same that are sent via syslog.

> Something very simple like that I could see supporting in our services 
> as well. However, the current proposal is a bit convoluted for me.

I'm afraid, I really can't see what's convoluted in this proposal, but 
I'd be happy to explain further if you are more specific about what 
worries you, and I haven't somehow already answered it.

> It seems clear that you all need to implement something fairly quickly 
> for this. And that it may not be something that the full group of 
> perfSONAR services want to support.

Would you please explain why any one service wouldn't like to support 
something as simple as self-test? And I'll assume it's simply my 
imagination seeing the first sentence trying to imply something.

> I would suggest you create your own namespace for this, so it is outside 
> of the 'perfsonar' namespace. Things in the perfsonar namespace should 
> probably be reviewed more thoroughly (and will be specified by the new 
> OGF group). Several of you have already noted that this should be 
> enhanced in the future - so it seems clear that we don't really know 
> what should be here yet.

I agree with you that I hardly have the necessary expertise to impose my 
ideas on the community. I wouldn't agree, though, if you imply a wider 
group of people to be incompetent enough. But one way or the other, 
"imposing" has never been my idea, really. As you can see, I'm seeking 
the opinion of everyone, including yours, and I do appreciate and 
respect all that were shared. I do apologize, if somehow I made the 
wrong impression, yet it must have been obvious that I'm very open to 
criticism and advice.

All that said, I understand your worries about the clear view of the 
namespace structure and contents, and I totally concur that all changes 
and additions must be well thought about. However, in my experience, if 
you do want to get a product ready and have it presented, trying to get 
the things perfect might very easily end in a "Vista-like" situation 
(unfortunately, these cases show also that however long you might be 
perfecting something, in the end it might turn out to be quite far from 
perfect actually.) Trust me, I know that too well constantly making that 
mistake (including with that very current task.)

> If you use your own namespace, you can get some operational and 
> development experience for what works and use that to make 
> recommendations for what should be in the perfsonar namespace in the 
> future, ok?

Jeff, although I do feel something very worrying in how you say this, I 
trust you're really just very much concerned to have something not being 
ruined from the very beginning. I can see your point, and I would agree 
with you, but I'm definitely not the person to decide.

> Perhaps something like:
>
> http://schemas.geant2.net/mdm/admin/selftest...

Could you please escalate this to Nicolas. I report to him, and this is 
really more an issue for a manager to decide.

Many thanks for your mail. I do appreciate that you shared your worries.

Cheers,
Luchesar

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