* Chris A. Henesy <lurker@shadowtech.org> [010603 11:00]:
> Now THIS looks like it could be EASILY used to build OGS!
> http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2/
>
> It's a GPLed meta directory project. The project is 3 years old and fairly
> advanced. It has a built in permissions system, transaction manager, task
> scheduler and has plugable information stores. (Dan this thing looks almost
> EXACTLY like the OGS architecture you and I discussed where OGS is a
> management layer above existing data stores)
>
> Anyway, check this out...
Wow, great find Chris. I had forgotten about this project. In going
through the site they are very focused on a point solution for DNS, NIS,
unix password files, automounter, samba, sendmail, LDAP, NT domain, IP
address space and remote access tacacs directory management. I doubt
anyone else has considered other applications of the same architecture,
but it's object based structure is a nice substrate. It's also
comforting that it's a production system at ARL:UT for a year, 50
concurrent administator/users with five years of development into
previously GASH and now GASH 2/Ganymede. I hope they get 1.0 final out
the door soon, it should be any time now.
So bringing this system down from directory use to a collaborative
information application on a desktop or client/server level sounds like
there's lots of potential. The work would be to customize the Ganymede
server with plug-in "schema kits" to handle collaborative discussion
systems (possibly with their data, but not necessarily) rather than
directory systems. The administrative features could be modified for
conference administrators, and with the trigger/event notification
possibilities this might be a powerful system. The user interface may
need new ways of interacting with the server but there is already a
client that can be modified or similar clients written.
Their goal of 50,000 network objects managed would go pretty far as a
collaborative/dynamic knowledge repository (DKR) but would need to be
reviewed for the loads that this application might bring. I wonder if
it's flexible enough to truly associate objects in arbitrary and/or
typed associative ways. Group editing and security are already built
in. Client and server are written in Java and communicate via RMI. A
"high-speed XML" bulk editing client is available.
Thanks again Chris.
-- -- Grant Bowman <grantbow@svpal.org>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 17:58:06 PDT