COSMOS SDD Minutes 18MAR08 11AM

Logistics

• Date: 18MAR08
• Time: 11AM EST

Agenda

Discuss options for installers for COSMOS 1.0

Minutes

In last week's architecture call, the subject of a COSMOS install was put forth. Numerous questions arose which has resulted in this meeting. The purpose of this call is to explore our options for installing COSMOS and whether some very early SDD work could be leveraged for this purpose.

Early SDD tool development to install COSMOS? SAS has some tools that might be capable of this which have a UI. There is concern from Mark Weitzel that we are developing an end user install tool rather than SDD runtime tooling. Originally a UI was planned to be an extension of the runtime we will be developing. Can we omit the UI elements of the code so that we just have a base runtime that would be able to install COSMOS?

Jeff Hamm: The tool on the SAS side is developed in Java and originally based on ANT frameworks. Many of the constructs of the code follow ANT design patterns. We found that ANT didn't offer adequate control mechanisms to be able to interject recovery, etc. code in the middle of execution, so for checks and balances, we circumvented much of the control flow of ANT. The tool itself is a framework that has a controller and allows users to plug in their own logging, task definitions, extensions, etc. These can be loaded dynamically. The framework is capable of handling zip files that are packaged by our internal processes. The set of rules that the tool uses to know what to do is defined in an XML ant-structured file, and then there is accompanying metadata that allows you specify more detailed information and instructions surrounding each task. The tool is completely data driven. Initial thoughts are that we could provide something to the community with this tool rather quickly.

Based upon our experience with deploying COSMOS, our tool should have enough functionality to install COSMOS, so we're thinking it could be rather easy to leverage the code we have at SAS to use for installing COSMOS. How decoupled are the UI elements? Can they be left out?

Jeff Hamm: The central core of the tool is capable of running in a headless environment, or it can allow third party graphical components for the UI.

Mark McCraw: The UI is extremely pluggable. UI components are authored which register themselves as listeners for particular types of notifications, so it is quite easy to create listeners that are command line driven, headless, Swing driven, etc.

To the community: do we want to use this?

CA: Only Mark seemed to have the UI concerns, so we probably need to talk more to him about this. Will this work in with the SDD work that is being done?

Jason: yes, this will probably work in conjunction with the p2 code and other SDD work being done. It would be a stepping stone, not a throwaway effort.

CA: Would it be useful to put together a quick demo to pique everyone's interest?

SAS agrees this would be a good idea.

COSMOS wiki instructions for installation should be up to date. Building a package from those instructions should be easy enough. Action item for Mark (McCraw) to review these and come up with a timeline for the initial demo/prototype. Target for before next week's SDD call at 9:00.

Because the concern was mainly by IBM, we will try to talk with Mark regarding his concerns.

Action Items

1. Review IU issues with Mark Weitzel
2. Prototype SDD installer for COSMOS using the installation tooling that has been under development at SAS.