[Twisted-Python] Need a mother?

[Jp Calderone]

On Sat, Mar 15, 2003 at 11:13:45AM -0600, Stephen Figgins wrote:
> I am evaluating twisted matrix as the framework for an enterprise 
> solution, a workflow/inventory/point of sale, does-all-kinds-of-things 
> system.  It needs to be highly secure, supporting SSL and encryption, 
> and some decent Auth utilities.   Our inclination is toward an n-tier 
> solution for each store, with some connectivity between stores in a 
> chain or under some kind of central management.
> 
> Because there are many pieces to this puzzle, lots of optional services 
> a system may need to provide and some specialized interfaces, my thought 
> has been to take a component approach.  This way we can drop in new 
> components or update components as needed.
> 
> We would like some way to centrally manage and load balance those 
> components, within a single host as well as over multiple hosts.  I am 
> beginning to grasp how PB works, some. What I don't see is any kind of 
> central registry for those components.  It looks like the client needs 
> to know the host and port of the component it wants in order to be able 
> to use it.   It looks to me like twisted.sister is meant to fulfill both 
> of these functions, centralizing login, load balancing, name services, 
> connecting clients to components.
> 
> I think a mother is just the thing I need.  Is it?
> 
> If so, then how should I go about learning to use it.  (I can create a 
> parent tap easily enough with mktap, but I am uncertain how to customize 
> it for our own authentication and encryption needs.)  Anyone have 
> examples of twisted sister in action?
> 
> How far off are we from a stable implementation of twisted.sister?  Our 
> goal for the system we are developing is to roll it out in about a year. 
>      It would be nice if the framework components we used were at least 
> semi-stable.

  Since no one else has jumped in yet, I'll tell you what I know (not a
lot).  As it stands now, Twisted.sister has a problem with authorizers. 
Some stuff it depends on got changed around, and no one brought Sister up to
date.  I posted a patch that fixes it to the list a while back, but it
seemed like a bad hack around a more basic problem.  No one responded, so I
never checked it in (I can make it available if you want and can't find it
in the archives).

  This is just one symptom of the real problem, I think: Twisted.sister has
no real users right now.  Twisted practices XP development most of the time,
which means the code that no one really has a use case for can sometimes get
into pretty bad shape.

  I might be overstating the problems with Sister - as I said, I don't know
too much about it - but in any case, I think many of the other features
Twisted offers *do* make it suited for your goal.  With a real user with
real use cases, Sister would definitely see improvement (You'd yell at us
when it broke, or if you're more proactive than that, you'd give us unit
tests for it ;).

  So what's my point?  Ahh, Twisted is good for this, but Sister might not
be ready for what you need it to do, because no one has asked Sister to do
*anything* before.  Give it a nudge in the right direction and it will
probably turn into what you need, or if it doesn't, doing what you need
"from scratch" (on top of Twisted) shouldn't be much more effort.

  Hope this helps,

  Jp
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