[geclipse-dev] Dynamic extension of a VO

[Moritz Post <mpost@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi gEclipse folks

This mail should be the beginning of a discussion regarding the dynamic 
extendibility of the gEclipse framework. What do i mean by that? While 
providing an AWS EC2 implementation for gEclipse it became very obvious 
that the following structure is to be desired due to the nature of the 
Amazon webservice structure:

One AWS Virtual Organization acts as an umbrella facility to house many 
different services. Services such as EC2, S3, DevPay etc... All these 
AWS services are access through webservices and have nothing in common 
thereby. They act as individuals and although they are able to access 
each other (also internally) they do not share a common denominator. 
This implies a dynamic structure on the side of gEclipse. A small core 
providing the AWS VO and a set of protocol implementations bundled under 
the AWS VO.

Here is the problem. How is something like this achieved in gEclipse? As 
far as i know there is no congruent concept available. What i have seen 
are proprietary extensions to the VOMS vo which lets one add an url to a 
distant service. Gria uses the ability to add multiple data stagers and 
such. Theses approaches do not add new functionality but just a set of 
remote "data sources/webservices" which the implementation in geclipse 
already knows how to handle. Therefore this scenario is not feasible for 
the AWS integration, which wants to add new functionality.

Is there any other way to implement such a scenario as outlined above in 
gEclipse? Anything i am not aware of to add functionality dynamically? 
The most common and satisfying approach for the AWS integration would be 
the Eclipse concept of extension points:

The AWS plugin offers a set of extensionpoints to which an 
implementation of an AWS service (EC2, S3...) could be plugged. This 
would be the most generic way of integrating the various services under 
the AWS umbrella VO. Although this solution would be specific to AWS it 
is the most direct as far as i see.

I hope to get any feedback for this architectural problem. Especially 
the people in the core are advised to answer... mathias, ariel, harald? :)

thanks for any input.
regards
Moritz