XML Schema update in place

Stephen McConnell mcconnell at dpml.net
Tue Mar 14 11:35:21 EST 2006



A large number of updates were committed under revision 1178.  These include
the addition of XML schema based XML for transit plugins, Depot libraries,
and a custom plugin strategy (extending the transit strategy) for
components.  As far as the end-product is concerning this means that the
data produced for both transit plugins and components share the same
structural base, and probably more important - are fully human readable.

For example - a transit plugin definition is described using a general form:

  <part>

    <info title="ACME Plugin">
      <description>
      My really great ACME plugin.
      </description>
    </info>

    <strategy xsi:type="plugin" class="acme.GeneralWidget"/>

    <classpath>
      <private>
        <uri>artifact:jar:acme/acme-superstore#SNAPSHOT</uri>
      </private>
    </classpath>

  </part>

The <strategy> element is completely customizable.  For example - I can
replace the <strategy> element with anything derived from the XML schema
definition of a part strategy (e.g. a Metro component definition extends
strategy and adds a completely new deployment solution).  This removed the
different implementations of classloader specifications (because everything
now leverages the single transit definition of a part <classpath>) and makes
the overall model much more generic.

While everything is building properly there remains some cleaning up to be
done.  In particular:

  1. the transit configuration needs to be moved to a schema based 
     configuration that enables reference to plugin and component 
     definitions

  2. the state configuration needs to be updated to extend from a 
     part strategy (which is kind of cool as it means that a application
     defection in xml will be represented as a new JVM instance)

  3. we need to resolve the sub-module issue (the general need to 
     declare and export sub-modules as independently managed 
     entities)

Cheers, Steve.

--------------------------
Stephen McConnell
mailto:mcconnell at dpml.net
http://www.dpml.net
 




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