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Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 17:09:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Aaron Mulder <ammulder@alumni.princeton.edu>
To: dev@geronimo.apache.org
Subject: Network Properties & Naming
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0508221655580.21954@saturn.opentools.org>
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So we have 3 properties for every network connector.  They are probably
most clearly described by using the analogous java.net objects:

InetAddress -- the hostname or IP to listen on, settable
port -- the port to listen on, settable
InetSocketAddress -- the combination of the previous two, read-only
  based on their settings

Right now, we use the property names (respectively):

"host" (String, for a host name or IP)
"port" (int)
"listenAddress" (InetSocketAddress)

So for any network listener, you configure the host and port, they 
typically get injected into the constructor of the GBean in question, and 
then at runtime you can get the host, port, or listenAddress 
(combination).  We like using the simple String and int for the settable 
properties, to make the management interface simple.

Jeff's raised the concern that the name "host" might be misleading in
Tomcat, where there's already a well-known "Host" object with a name, so
it might not be clear what the "host" property is supposed to refer to.  
I guess we could change our properties to "address", "port", and
"listenAddress", or "listenAddress", "port", and "socketAddress".

Also, originally, the InetSocketAddress property was in there so we could
distinguish any network-related GBeans in order to show the list during
the startup sequence.  That's no longer needed since we can now search by
interface instead.  So we might drop that property.  But it could also be
useful to keep it and ask for it to represent the "current listen state",
so if you change the port in the management console the "port" property
might show the new port, but the "InetSocketAddress" property would show
the old port until the connector was restarted.

Any thoughts on whether it's worth changing these properties and what they
should be changed to?

Thanks,
	Aaron