[occi-wg] OCCI MC - State Machine Diagram

Roger Menday roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com
Thu May 14 07:07:53 CDT 2009



On 14 May 2009, at 12:24, Sam Johnston wrote:

> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Roger Menday <roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com 
> > wrote:
>
> On 14 May 2009, at 10:59, Alexis Richardson wrote:
>
> +1 to Sam's "we may need to revisit this point in the name of interop"
>
> I'm not sure if this is *just* an interop thing ...
>
> I thought my suggestions yesterday on how to transition state, error  
> reporting, handling 'processing' states, etc ... were reasonable.
>
> Kind of disappointed this morning that I didn't get some feedback  
> from you guys ... :(
>
> Roger, I was working on OCCI until 5am this morning and while this  
> is by far the most interesting part of the work it's only half of  
> the problem. The other half, adoption/marketing, is boring grunt  
> work that keeps us organisers very much on our toes, preventing us  
> from being responsive at times.

Hi Sam,

I really wasn't questioning your commitment !

I'm interested in learning/participating/influencing - why I was  
hopeful for a reply.

Roger

> In particular the absence of consensus around formats has put me in  
> a fairly awkward position for my scheduled talk at Prague on Tuesday  
> (which was due yesterday) and is jeopardising previously agreed  
> deadlines that I have been advertising heavily in my own name. It  
> doesn't help that I don't really share your concerns about states  
> being a problem and am confident both that what we have will work  
> and that it will invariably be refined in due course.

> Thanks for your understanding - I think you would be surprised to  
> see how much behind-the-scenes work goes on in constantly driving  
> this kind of initiative forward, which is why one has to be 100%  
> committed to, and believe in, the cause.
>
> Sam
>
>
>
> At this stage we are shooting for a draft.  The draft will let people
> implement prototypes which will let us debug interop and refine the
> model.
>
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net> wrote:
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Andre Merzky <andre at merzky.net>  
> wrote:
>
> Quoting [Sam Johnston] (May 13 2009):
>
>    Yes, me, I don't think HATEOAS should be applied in this
>    context.   But I realise/accept that I maybe the only one
>    with that opinion - thats ok.  So I'll say it here one last
>    time, for the record, and then will shut up: "a static
>    simple state model allows for very simple clients.
>    Extensions can be defined via substates, or additional
>    transitions."
>
>   I would counterargue that HATEOAS allows for even simpler clients
>   because they don't have to worry about hardwiring even a simple  
> state
>   model. Using HTTP we can even feed them plain $LANG descriptions of
>   what the transitions and targets are - it doesn't get any easier  
> than
>   that and you don't have to worry about updating clients to implement
>   new goodies.
>
> I don't see that.  If  I want to write a client tool which
> starts a resource, I want to make sure the resource is in
> RUNNING state when the client reports success.  But if that
> client (a) has to infer the available states from a
> registry, it cannot posisbly know which state has the
> semantic meaning of RUNNING attached.  Further (b), if the
> client only sees those state transitions it is allowed in
> its current state, how does it know what transition path to
> take to reach that target state?  Is it (I am making those
> up obviously):
>
>  INITIAL -> create() -> CREATED -> elevate() -> ELEVATED () -> run()  
> ->
>  RUNNING
>
> or
>
>  INITIAL -> create() -> CREATED -> init() -> INITIALIZED -> run() ->
> RUNNING
>
> Or should the tool simply fail because it cannot see a run()
> transition in its INITIAL state?
>
> The client must at least know how to create a resource and when it  
> has done
> so successfully a "start" actuator will appear, perhaps with a  
> target state
> of "running" (TBD). In that case it knows that if it pulls the "start"
> handle eventually the resource should end up "running". Otherwise it  
> could
> know (from the registry) that "start" is the right button to push, but
> that's starting to break HATEOAS principles. We have options - it's  
> just a
> matter of finding the right one.
>
>
> I think HATEOAS works pretty well if a human is in the loop
> who can parse the available transition description, and
> deduce a semantic meaning.  I don't think it makes for
> simple tooling, really.
>
> I agree that humans are better at this stuff than computers but I'm
> unconvinced this translates to complex tooling.
>
>
> Then again, I may misunderstand the proposed usage of
> HATEOAS in OCCI.  So, can you help me out: what mechanism
> will avoid the confusion from the example above, if a vendor
> can provide init() and elevate() transitions on the fly,
> with no predefined semantics attached?  How would my tool
> deduce the transition path it needs to enact?
>
> The semantics for common functions will be in the registry. It's  
> ones that
> are uncommon and impossible to predict like "translate" and  
> "migrate" that
> we're catering for here, and generally there will need to be some  
> kind of
> client side support for these.
>
> As I said below, "we may need to revisit this point in the name of  
> interop",
> and I suggested categories as one possible solution (e.g. a  
> "starting" vs a
> "stopping" transition)... parametrised transition calls are  
> another... for
> example, how do I tell something to start *without* saved state if  
> saved
> state is present (ala cold start vs resume)?
>
> Sam
>
>
>   I don't think anyone knows every possible thing that users are going
> to
>   want to do with the API (I certainly don't have the confidence to  
> say
> I
>   do anyway) but we may need to revisit this point in the name of
>   interop... Atom categories would be one way to achieve this (e.g.
> "Cold
>   Reboot" and "Warm Reboot" might go in the "restart" category).
>   Sam
>
> References
>
>   1. mailto:andre at merzky.net
>
>
>
> --
> Nothing is ever easy.
>
>
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>
>
> Roger Menday (PhD)
>
> <roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com>
>
> Senior Researcher, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Limited
> Hayes Park Central, Hayes End Road, Hayes, Middlesex, UB4 8FE, U.K.
> Tel: +44 (0) 208 606 4534
>
>
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Roger Menday (PhD)
<roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com>

Senior Researcher, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Limited
Hayes Park Central, Hayes End Road, Hayes, Middlesex, UB4 8FE, U.K.
Tel: +44 (0) 208 606 4534



______________________________________________________________________
                                        
 Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Limited
 Hayes Park Central, Hayes End Road, Hayes, Middlesex, UB4 8FE
 Registered No. 4153469
 
 This e-mail and any attachments are for the sole use of addressee(s) and
 may contain information which is privileged and confidential. Unauthorised
 use or copying for disclosure is strictly prohibited. The fact that this
 e-mail has been scanned by Trendmicro Interscan and McAfee Groupshield does
 not guarantee that it has not been intercepted or amended nor that it is
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