GTT: Announce & Question

Derek A. Neighbors derek@gnue.org
Sat, 08 Sep 2001 14:26:32 -0700


>
>
>gtt is also single-user, its not currently multi-user/web based,
>although I'm really turned on by the idea of being able to (simply) 
>build network/web-based/client-server apps with the beauty of a
>desktop interface (gnome (or kde)) with the inherent multi-user
>of apache.  I think this is the holy grail that SOAP, XML, XML-RPC,
>MS .net etc are looking for, but I don't think anyones quite found.
>Certainly not in the free software world.
>
Guess I am spoiled.  I am doing this in the free software world right 
now with GNU Enterprise.  Currently define a UI in XML and it runs on 
Motif, GTK, Win32, Curses, Mac and Web.  (web and mac are still in beta 
for us)  So one UI definite file and all those platforms supported.  The 
back end storage in SQL but persisting OBJECTs to the clients for 
business logic.  Currently we only support CORBA as the RPC mechanism, 
but its all abstracted so not CORBA dependent.  With a bit of work we 
plan on supporting XML-RPC, SOAP and Message Queuing as well as direct 
sockets.

>Derek, this *might* well be the next obvious area for an infrastructure
>project, such as gnue, to tackle.  Should we talk more?
>
Sure we can talk more, but pretty much we are doing it.  The 
infrastructure already exists for RPC.  All this talk of .net and 
webservices seems silly to us at GNU Enterprise.  To us its all a way 
for a 'vendor' to try to control things.  As the mechanisms exist today 
to such things.

>gtt has zero administration: either its already installed, or you
>rpm or deb it in.  There's no setup.
>
>double-choco-latte requires an admin to install & configure apache, 
>install and configure php, set up security, set up accounts, etc. 
>which is a challenge for a non-programmer, and impossible for a
>non-'power-user'.
>
Um I regulary do DCL setups in 5 minutes w/ just following instructions. 
 I agree its got the apache setup iss, but still.  You could say that 
gtt requires you have GNOME or GNU\Linux up and running, but lets not go 
down that debate.  I assume with any business application there will be 
a minimal amount of setup as its multi user stuff.

>Never mind that you really want to run double-latte on a server 
>that has raid, and is backed up every so often, etc. 
>
BTW: The thing I dont like about DCL is that its only web based.  Im 
writing GNUe screens for it so that you wouldnt have to setup the 
'apache' thing if you didnt want to. (it will be a long time though as 
its on my back burner)

>I think zero-admin is a serious issue, just don't know what to do about
>it ...
>
Zero administration is bad IMHO.  Low maintenance and easy maintenance 
are ok though.

>Well, my other poineering effort, back-burnered for the moment, is to 
>create web plugins for gnucash.  I want the multi-user version of
>gnucash to operate as if it were a kind of browser applet, so one could 
>seemlessly interoperate with e.g. double-choco-latte.
>
No offense, but part of the bitch of working with gnucash is the 
interfaces are all in C or guile/scheme.  Everytime I go to start, I 
cringe and say forget it I will do it later.  Business people want to 
QUICKLY and EASILY extend thier applications not use archaic and clumsy 
methods of doing it.  Before a flame war breaks out over languages I 
like both C and Scheme, BUT I think both have thier places.  Extending 
business applications is not it. :)

Have you all considered writing extensibility in more than one language?

>Basically, you get the nice GUI of a desktop app, but you get the 
>web-page power of serving html/apache/cgi-bin/php.
>
Read above, obviously I agree that its necessary. :)

>
>I mostly know how to do this if I can ignore the rest of the world and
>invent ad-hoc interfaces .... but that what I'd do would be hand-tailored, 
>and ad-hoc, disturbs me.  But no one has yet built the kind of generic 
>tools for desktop-to-web-application integration that I want.  
>
You really should revisit GNU Enterprise (btw: i didnt make to make this 
post reference GNU Enterprise so much.  I really want the mail to focus 
on how we can give business users solutions specifically using the 
GNUCash accounting package.

Derek