[Opensim-dev] Cable Beach update

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Mike Mazur wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have read through the most recent Office Hour transcript[1] and Cable
> Beach was brought up. (Thanks Nebadon!) I'm unable to attend the office
> hours, so please allow me to contribute a little to the discussion here.
> 
> At this stage, I don't expect Cable Beach to offer better performance
> over the existing asset server.
> 
> Cable Beach does offer authentication built-in, though. This allows you
> to access your assets thorugh external (third-party) applications which
> may be other grids, editors, websites offering items for sale, etc.
> 
> I suggested testing Cable Beach on some regions on OSGrid to see how
> it'll fare under real-world use. I believe Intel is currently using
> Cable Beach on their internal grid as well as ScienceSim[2], but I
> wanted to supplement that with some testing at OSGrid as well. Setting
> this up sooner rather than later could help identify issues introduced
> with needed changes, such as converting to Mono.Addins and using
> OpenSim's HTTP server.
> 
> I figured it's possible to run Cable Beach in parallel with the current
> OSGrid asset server (same machine, different machine, up to you), and
> point a few regions that get some traffic to use this asset server. The
> asset server could use its own database (a copy of the current assets
> table?) or point at the current assets DB.
> 
> Having said that, the end goal is to replace the existing asset server
> with Cable Beach in OpenSim core, and end up with only one asset server.
> 
> So as far as I understand, there are two issues with Cable Beach as-is:
> 
> 1. ExtensionLoader
> 2. HttpServer
> 
> I will have a look[3] at using Mono.Addins instead of ExtensionLoader
> in Cable Beach. We can re-evaluate this situation later based on the
> results.
> 
> Hopefully the upstream HttpServer can be updated as required so the DLL
> can be updated in OpenSim. This way the asset server can use the
> existing HTTP server.
> 
> Any other comments or suggestions to move this forward?

Just two more points from me for now

1)  Can this be put into our existing server framework (e.g. front end console classes derive from 
OpenSim.Framework.Servers.BaseOpenSimServer?  I know this is hardly the best console front-end in the world, but I would 
like to see us be as consistent as possible across all servers until something better comes along.

2)  I notice a heavy use of JSON in the client docs, which is referred to as the "Reference Asset Protocol".  Does this 
mean that such communication cannot be carried out using XML?   XML is what we use everywhere at the moment, and it 
would be strange to move one aspect of comms to JSON without any agreement to make everything JSON.

> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
> 
> [1]
> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Chat_log_from_the_meeting_on_2009-01-20
> [2] http://sciencesim.com
> [3]
> https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/opensim-dev/2009-January/004500.html
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
> 


-- 
justincc
Justin Clark-Casey
http://justincc.wordpress.com