[saga-rg] Re: Fwd (s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA Strawman API

[Tom Goodale]

Hi,

On Mon, 30 May 2005, Andre Merzky wrote:

>> If you want middleware providers to support the interface specifying how
>> protocol plugins are added in is as important as specifying how users
>> will expect to use the APIs.
>
> You might be right - but I am not sure.  If every middleware
> provider _can_ implement its own SAGA version in whatever
> way he wants, hi might actually do that.
>
> If there at some point is a SAGA implementation which allows
> well defined plugins, the middleware providers might use
> that instead, or _still_ want to implementis their own way.
>
> To be sure: we want to have a pluggable implementation (and
> in fact we work on such one), but that plugin specification
> should, in our opinion, totally distinct from the SAGA API
> spec.
>
> What do otheres think about this issue?

SAGA aims to provide an API for at the application developer level, and 
not at the level where middleware may be plugged in;  we are concentrating 
on the API from that level, and not specifying architecture - specifying 
an API to add protocol plug-ins would be out of scope.  We want to keep 
this API small, and focussed on the application developers, giving SAGA 
implementors maximum freedom within that.

I would hope that any implementation which is plug-in based would provide 
suitable documentation as to its use, and possible at a future date a 
working group could be setup to standardise such interfaces, but I think 
it is out of scope for the current group, and probably premature to try 
it.

Cheers,

Tom