RE: [hyades-dev] The state of the HCE project

[Allan K Pratt <apratt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I think Harm echoes my sentiments about not knowing what we're really 
about here when he says, "changes [should be] based on well identified 
requirements." I don't think we have established what those are.

Vishnu wrote, "Though it is looking like house of cards..., at some point 
I feel that all these [documents] will merge and make sense." That's not 
how it's supposed to happen. The design and architecture shouldn't emerge 
from the implementation; it should be the other way around. The only time 
the ad-hoc approach works is when the people writing the command protocols 
already have a pretty good idea of the requirements and overall 
architecture in their heads, and it's the SAME idea, and they just haven't 
bothered to write it down. I think it's clear that the people contributing 
to these HCE document reviews do NOT all have the same design ideas in 
mind.

Harm also reminds us that we can't be in the business of wholesale 
replacement of the Workbench - RAC - agent protocols and structures. As 
far as I can tell, that's EXACTLY the business we're in. Is there some 
kind of coexistence strategy? Are all the new commands and protocols being 
piggybacked on the current RAC as "custom commands" or something? If so, 
why? Is the RAC protocol really so awful that we can't accomplish what we 
want by extending it?

Maybe it's time to step back and rethink this. We can start by answering 
this question: "What problems with the current Workbench/RAC/Agent system 
are we trying to solve?" Then we can ask, "If possible, how can we solve 
those problems in the context of the current system and not a new, 
parallel system?"

-- Allan Pratt, apratt@xxxxxxxxxx
Rational software division of IBM