Hubbard, Greg L wrote:

I vote against this. I LIKE easily understood text files, since I configure Hobbit with a text editor. If there were to be an configuration GUI some day that took over all Hobbit configuration tasks, then I would cease to care how the files are stored.

GLH

-----Original Message----- From: Galen Johnson [mailto:Galen.Johnson at sas.com] Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 10:08 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] xml configs

Hey Henrik,

I know this would be a rather significant change but have you considered switching hobbit to use xml based config files? I'm actually working on an external module that will use an xml config file and thinking about the schema, etc it occurred to me that hobbit would lend itself nicely to xml configs.

Just curious...

=G=

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We use scripts to build config files, especially bb-hosts and all of it's included files. I'd need a bunch of cycles to move that to xml, if only because I haven't (yet) done a lot with xml in scripting.

A gui would not help me at all. We automate everything we can with perl.

--David

I'm well versed in XML and complex XLST transformations and PERL, I do this all the time, but I still prefer to leave Hobbit's config files the way they are. I see no benefit in moving them to XML, except to support some yet-to-be-developed GUI configuration tool. Which I wouldn't use anyway ... I'm a command line type of guy. But if the Hobbit config is delivered in XML files in the future, I won't whine about it. I'll just vi the XML and be on my merry way.

-----Original Message----- From: Ralph Mitchell [mailto:ralphmitchell at gmail.com] Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 10:04 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] xml configs

On 5/21/07, David Pullman <dpullman at nist.gov> wrote:

We use scripts to build config files, especially bb-hosts and all of it's included files. I'd need a bunch of cycles to move that to xml, if only because I haven't (yet) done a lot with xml in scripting.

A gui would not help me at all. We automate everything we can with

perl.

I don't do perl *or* xml, so that would be a NO vote from me too.

Ralph Mitchell

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I'm with Greg for his reasons, and the fact (yes, fact) that xml is stupidly slow to parse compared to the alternative (no tags). If you don't need the conformity xml brings (i.e. standard format across multiple unknown systems), then xml isn't advantageous, regardless of how much hobbit's config files would be easily put into xml.

No offense meant, of course, Galen. I think you're correct that it does make an easy conversion to an xml schema. It just doesn't make sense to make it less readable with such a performance hit.

(I'd still like to see Henrik's take on the idea, though.)

Tod Hansmann Network Engineer

-----Original Message----- From: Hubbard, Greg L [mailto:greg.hubbard at eds.com] Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 9:24 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: RE: [hobbit] xml configs

I vote against this. I LIKE easily understood text files, since I configure Hobbit with a text editor. If there were to be an configuration GUI some day that took over all Hobbit configuration tasks, then I would cease to care how the files are stored.

GLH

-----Original Message----- From: Galen Johnson [mailto:Galen.Johnson at sas.com] Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 10:08 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] xml configs

Hey Henrik,

I know this would be a rather significant change but have you considered switching hobbit to use xml based config files? I'm actually working on an external module that will use an xml config file and thinking about the schema, etc it occurred to me that hobbit would lend itself nicely to xml configs.

Just curious...

=G=

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On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 07:24:58PM +0200, Henrik Stoerner wrote:

On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 11:08:12AM -0400, Galen Johnson wrote:

...

I know this would be a rather significant change but have you considered switching hobbit to use xml based config files?

No, I haven't considered this.

To make me do such a conversion, however, I would have to see some genuine benefit in doing so. And right now, I don't see any - even though I spent a couple of days last week learning a lot about XML. Just to be able to tick off the "XML configurable ?" checkbox doesn't count much in my world :-)

Just remembered one point that I would like to make: I am not against using XML in Hobbit, on the contrary it could make a lot of sense for Hobbit to provide more of the data it has in XML form. There is already the "hobbitdxboard" command that gives you the current status in XML, and other kind of data could well be provided by Hobbit via XML, e.g. so some 3rd party application can query Hobbit for the configuration of a monitored host. Using XML for this is a no-brainer - making data available in a standardized form is exactly why XML exists.

I'm working on making the bb-hosts file be needed only on the central Hobbit server, so when you have multiple Hobbit servers running network tests, you need not distribute or maintain the bb-hosts file on multiple servers. Among other things, this requires that an application can query the Hobbit server for the configuration of one or more hosts; and I can see several reasons to make this interface available in some XML form - even if Hobbit itself might not use the XML version of the data.

Regards, Henrik

Nothing against XML in general. But my feeling is that it's of most use when data needs to be shared by different applications maintained by different people. Or if you're using some generic off-the-shelf tool to accomplish a task and that tool needs XML.

I doubt there are too many apps out there (any at all?) that have a need to parse a hobbit config file. The things that come to mind as possibilities have already been covered by Hobbit built-ins, like bbhostgrep. And even if that one weren't available, I could hack out a quick shell script to get the info faster than I could review the XML schema and implement structured parsing of an XML config file. And I'm better than average with XML/XSLT.

My Hobbit client scripts are 99% custom things I've written. Many access XML files for various reasons (typically using XSLT). But that's because these client scripts share bits and pieces of the data with a wide diversity of other apps. Were it only the Hobbit client that needed the data, XML/XSLT would be way overkill.

-----Original Message----- From: Galen Johnson [mailto:Galen.Johnson at sas.com] Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 12:21 PM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: RE: [hobbit] xml configs

WOW...well, this was an unexpected hot button. To me, XML is as easy as the current config but looks more structured and seems like it would be more easily expandible.

I just vi whatever file I need anyway so GUI's make no difference to me, either. I find it interesting to note that not a single response has been in favor. At most, a non-committal, luke-warm "makes no diff" is the "most" favorable I've seen.

It has been an interesting discussion, though.

=G=

-----Original Message----- From: Galen Johnson [mailto:Galen.Johnson at sas.com] Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 11:08 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] xml configs

Hey Henrik,

I know this would be a rather significant change but have you considered switching hobbit to use xml based config files? I'm actually working on an external module that will use an xml config file and thinking about the schema, etc it occurred to me that hobbit would lend itself nicely to xml configs.

Just curious...

=G=

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