Re: ISPMAN API

Cory Petkovsek wrote:

>On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 10:15:04PM -0500, Serving  wrote:
>  
>
>>I wonder if there is an API for ispman ?  There was a SOAP server attempt
>>about 2 years ago by Atif that was abandoned for lack of general interest. 
>>    
>>
>use ISPMan;
>
>  
>
This is great for adding new features to ISPman. The problem is that 
many larger organizations/enterprises are doing more then just web/email 
hosting. There's other islands of data - eg Oracle databases, Java based 
systems, SQL Server 2000 based applications, CRM applications, etc that 
aren't using Perl or a Linux/Unix/POSIX type of environment.

Therefore, what I envision is a bit of both - a perl server that uses 
the ISPMan perl modules/libraries, but presents an XML/SOAP interface to 
systems on the network that wish to retrieve data, trigger operations, 
or input data. These SOAP interfaces wouldn't be provided for everything 
in ISPMan - just some of the functionality on an as-required basis.

I've been maintaining a bunch of links on SOAP in general, SOAP on 
various development platforms, and SOAP + Perl at 
http://www.nyetwork.org/wiki/SOAP.

Regarding documenting the API - that's a debate I don't really want to 
get into :-) My take is that even with the documentation you end up 
having to read the source anyway... and the codebase is fairly small, so 
it's pretty easy to use grep and searching within vi to find the actual 
implementation anyways. And, out of date or badly written documentation 
is worse then none at all :-)

>It still has to be maintained after that in order to continue the regular the
>release cycle.  ISPMan has problems, but over all it is fairly descent.  It
>utilizes some good underlying technologies (postfix, openldap, perl, etc) and
>has a descent framework.  I'm just starting working on the ispman code base,
>but don't see a need to hire anyone.  I think that as things grow the more
>people will be interested and as Atif doles out CVS access to interested
>developers then it will naturally attract people.
>  
>
I totally agree.

wk


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