OpenSim Services and Service Connectors
From OpenSimulator
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This article or section is a Proposal It does not represent the current state of OpenSim, but is an idea for future work in OpenSim. Please feel free to update this page as part of the proposal discussion. |
Motivation
OpenSim was originally designed with the ambitious goal of becoming the Apache server of Virtual Worlds, while still able to interact with the standard Second Life(tm) client. These two design rules have conflicted all along, but overall OpenSim has been able to find a good balance between revolution and evolution. Compatibility with the LL client has been here all along, while at the same time we have been able to try out completely new ideas that have inspired lots of people to try their own.
The OpenSim framework is becoming so many things to so many people that it has reached the point where the original architecture of the software itself, largely inspired by what the SL Client dictates and by the Linden Lab grid, is hampering progress on all those fronts. We need to rethink the architecture of the software in order to be able to support the variety of things that people want to do with OpenSim without having to go through lengthy design discussions and negotiations for it to do "the right thing", which obviously doesn't exist. For some, "the right thing" is a server infrastructure that is a 100% reproduction of Second Life; for others, "the right thing" is a 3D server infrastructure that is 100% compatible with the Web; for others, "the right thing" is a desktop 3D simulator; and for many others "the right thing" is many points in between.
Proposal Summary
We propose a new software architecture that can easily accommodate all the system architectures that people want to build. The basic concepts of this new software architecture are (1) Service Interfaces; (2) Service Connectors; (3) Service Implementations; and (4) Server Shells. Service implementations are pieces of code that can be loaded into any server shell, along with their "in" service connectors that receive service requests from clients. Clients access services through service interfaces, and by loading the corresponding "out" service connectors that send requests to the service implementations. The figure below illustrates the general concept.
