On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 01:12 -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:
anorexicpoodle wrote:
Have you looked at all into the ACP-XML api? I have an old doc from 4.1 on it but haven't seen much since. Seems like it would be a great way to integrate larger scale Acme provisioning and management with a home grown system.
Unless the API is so complicated[1] that it's easier to write an automated CLI-based provisioning wrapper for a narrow class of tasks. :-)
I have encountered this a lot. Say I need a little tool to add a few routes to some piece of infrastructure. It is unlikely that the scope of the tool will substantially expand, and at any rate, it is certain that evolution toward a fuller OSS/BSS framework can be categorically ruled out. I can either spend half a day building a little wrapper with Net::Telnet + Expect, or I can sit there for a week trying to decipher some vastly overcomplicated enterprise-strength B2B/B2C 24/7 five-9s N+1 high-ROI clicks-and-mortar turn-key-convergent mission-critical service-impacting world-historic culture-transformative spiritually-transfigurative SOAP and/or WSDL monstrosity that requires maddeningly various client-side libraries, executes like an 800 lb. donkey stuck in a tar pit.
There is real value to doing things the "right" way and diving into the latter. But the Byzantine thought patterns underlying the design philosophies of these things often weigh against it economically.
-- Alex
[1] I haven't seen this API, so, to be perfectly fair, I don't know.
Fortunately the ACP api seems like little more than a XML wrapper for the CLI, though there might be an advantage in that I am unsure if ACP locks the config session on an SD, where a scripted terminal session most surely would. Seems like a happy middle ground between the full blown EMS or managing them by hand. FWIW the EMS communicates with the SD via ACP