pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> Anyway the pertinent aspect in regards to this group is that I use
> XML-RPC as the server/client exchange and it is an absolute DELIGHT as
> well as super simple!  
>....  Not really sure how to explain
> what it is and how it works if you don't already know, but it
> basically takes care of converting the data to XML sending it TCP over
> IP and then unconverting it back to data... even using a different
> programming language as the client.  Truly kick butt.

Sounds good to me.
Your explanation is good...for me anyhow...I haven't looked at details 
of XML-RPC much so nothing to add.

> This doesn't really give us any advantages in terms of our web based
> client, but future custom clients could greatly benefit from this.

Yep, and, it would also work fine from the start.

Again, if we are going to provide a clean API, use XML and/or XML-RPC 
and so on to support alternate clients, I think it's a good idea to 'eat 
our own dog food' (as they say at the Evil Empire) and do that right 
from the start.

That will shake the bugs out sooner rather than later, and again, will 
expose any mistaken assumptions about how easy/possible it will be to do 
it all later on right away.
Otherwise we may find we've 'coded ourselves into a corner' somehow 
later on and have to redo/undo stuff (maybe lots of stuff, maybe not - 
thing about unknowable complications is that they imply unknowable 
amounts of extra work...).
I'm not doubting our development expertise at all.
However, we're all humans and we don't (can't) think of everything ahead 
of time, so let's not try to.

My $.04 on that... :-)

John S.


--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
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Whole Systems Design Services
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