Tool support

[marklittle]

We've got a lot to do for the GA, so it is unrealistic to assume we can have glossy tools for the first product release. However, we do need to have some tool support and I'd like to initiate the discussion here. Where I think we can make an impact for improving the user and deployer experience of JBossESB will be:

(i) registry - being able to browse the registry and determine details about services.

(ii) transformation - being able to check the transformation rules that are associated with message types.

(iii) building the transformation-chain (stuff Tom added recently).

(iv) browsing the content-based routing "tables" and modifying them on-the-fly. Maybe a bit premature because we haven't integrated that code yet.

(v) deploying services and creating basic service contracts (essentially creating some of the XML config trees that are currently edited by hand).

Any more for the 4.0 GA that we could consider?

[arvinder]

Perhaps configuration management? There was some mention of using a Property Editor to manage configuration of the esb. This would be a good candidate for tools inclusion.

[marklittle]

Yeah, good point. I added the PropertyManager to the rearchitecture branch, but need to dig out the documentation.

[arvinder]

Cross Post from the epr thread http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=90464&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10

Perhaps the following should also be considered for tooling support:

- Auditing (message failures per EPR etc)
- Metrics (message throughput on the bus, endpoint throughput etc)

This may then lead on to considering a 'web/management console'. So would all the tooling support fall under this perhaps?

[kurtstam]

As far as the registry goes I have found that jUDDI comes with an admin webapp, which currenty seems to be confused about what juddi-api version it wants to be in (v1 or v2), but that can be easily fixed.

Also the Eclipse WTP project has an UDDI browser: http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/jst/components/ws/1.0/tutorials/WebServiceExplorer/WebServiceExplorer.html

What kind of requirements do we have for the 'tools'? Should they be eclipse plugins? Or web-based?

--Kurt

[marklittle]

Eclipse-based doesn't necessarily preclude them being web-based, but I take your point. I think initially just having tools is more important than having a uniform approach to them: for example, it may be a hassle to switch from Eclipse to IE/ffox or something else in order to use a couple of tools, but not having those tools could be even more of a hassle!