Stefan Zoerner wrote:
> Emmanuel Lecharny wrote:
>> ...
>> I do think that we went far too far.
>>
>> wdyt ?
>
> Let me first say that I really liked the idea of making configuration 
> of ApacheDS simpler form a user (e.g. administrator) perspective. The 
> xbean approach did a good job here, the files are shorter and more 
> expressive.
I will temper my initial mail : xbean has some advantage : it generates 
a XSD. But the indirection is still a PITA...
> Unfortunately, some ports of the configuration are comparable 
> complicated to the 1.0 pure Spring world (or even more complex).
>
> For instance:
> ...
>     <!-- The desired quality-of-protection, used by DIGEST-MD5 and 
> GSSAPI.  -->
>     <saslQop>
>       <value 
> xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans">auth</value>
>       <value 
> xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans">auth-int</value>
>       <value 
> xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans">auth-conf</value>
>     </saslQop>
> ...
It can be replaced by :

<spring:beans xmlns:spring="http://xbean.apache.org/schemas/spring/1.0"
              xmlns:s="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"    
<!-- Added NameSpace declaration -->
              xmlns="http://apacheds.org/config/1.0">
...
    <saslQop>
      <s:value>auth</s:value>
      <s:value>auth-int</s:value>
      <s:value>auth-conf</s:value>
    </saslQop>

Much simpler ...

> The question I asked myself when xbean was introduced: Isn't it 
> possible  to use our own namespace and use pure Spring 2.0 
> functionality for that to make configuration easier? This has been 
> done with transactions, AOP etc. in Spring itself.
>
> Perhaps we can obtain a comparable result with native Spring features, 
> and avoid the dependency to xbean.
>
> http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.0.x/reference/extensible-xml.html 
>
May be... This has to be explored.
>
> Whether this will conflict with Emmanuel's requirement to make 
> configuration easier to parse/edit with Studio -- I have not thought 
> about that yet.
The thing is that we have one major problem with Spring + xbean : when 
you want to debug the server, from the initialization point, it's a real 
PITA, as the flow is not know unless you have the server.xml and the 1.0 
mapping file open on the same screen (and I don't have a 40" screen on 
my laptop ...).

Another point is that we have mixed configuration laoding and 
initialization, which is, from my POV, a bad mistake.

I know that some will disagree with me, and it's fine, as soon as I just 
express some frsutration I have. That does not mean I'm right ! But I 
want to make it clear that if I'm frustrated with what we have, then 
there is some chance that new committers will find it frustrating too...

Thanks Stefan !

-- 
--
cordialement, regards,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.iktek.com
directory.apache.org