[SR-Users] RFC: rating - ranking system for community

[Alex Balashov]

By way of further thought:

Perhaps a component-orientated view is not the correct one here. It
almost sounds like what is being sought is a kind of "cookbook of
Kamailio patterns"[1], if you like. This answers a lot of questions
that also capture preferences about third-party FOSS componentry, such
as:

"Should I do HA failover with VRRP or Heartbeat?"

"Is Kamailio + PostgreSQL a stable combination for a high-volume
registrar?"

"Are there pitfalls to DMQ dialog replication?"

"What is the best way to build a load balancer with failover and gateway
monitoring?"

etc.

-- Alex

[1] We use the term "cookbook" differently in this project, but this
usage is closer to the commonplace conventional one.

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 08:35:15AM -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> A few off-the-cuff thoughts, in no particular order:
> 
> 1. Kamailio does have hundreds of modules of all kinds, and some sort of
> guide for which ones to use when, or some other schema which would serve
> to provide some conceptual organisation for the modules, is probably a
> desirable documentation objective. 
> 
> 2. I am nevertheless wary of any system which purports to "rank" or
> "rate" components. 
> 
> One obvious reason is that popularity isn't a very good metric for
> whether something is appropriate for or applicable to a particular
> purpose. There is a reason the expression "degenerated into a popularity
> contest" exists in our industry. This is all the more true given
> (arguably) Kamailio's somewhat unique status as a "toolkit" or a
> "framework" for building certain kinds of systems and services; it means
> some of the most useful components in many scenarios might be either
> obscure, or so broadly general that a highly fact-dependent /
> situation-specific logic of its relationship to a given scenario is hard
> to tease out. Would you "recommend" the TM module? Is it widely used?
> :-)
> 
> This goes to another, more general problem with ranking components, and
> that is that the module ecosystem is a wildly eclectic bag of things of
> very different scope. Without a more rigid preconceived taxonomy to
> create the right mental categories, meaningful comparisons between
> modules are difficult to draw, as would be theoretically required for
> some kind of ranking or any system which purports to raise the profile
> of some components over others. 
> 
> Kamailio modules fall into at least a few identifiable categories--this
> is just a half-hearted improvisational stab at it, and probably not very
> nuanced:
> 
> a. "Essential" / "core" - while these are technically modules, their
> feature set is so universal and critical to most non-trivial Kamailio
> implementations that they are substantially equivalent to "core"
> functionality. Modules like 'rr', 'tm' and 'pv' clearly fall into this
> category. One cannot really do anything worthy of remark with Kamailio
> without them, excluding some exotic cases.
> 
> b. Broad and holistic systems - complete categories of broad SIP server
> functionality implemented in more or less one module (usrloc +
> registrar, presence/pua, auth*, dispatcher, etc.);
> 
> c. Dependencies of other higher-level modules - the relationship of
> 'usrloc' to 'registrar' is suitably described by this; if you're using
> 'usrloc', you're almost certainly using 'registrar', and there are
> really no meaningful standalone uses of 'usrloc', nor does it expose any
> route script functions. At the same time, the list of things one may
> wish to interrogate via RPC/management interfaces are split between
> 'usrloc' and 'registrar' in ways that make sense to a programmer but
> which users might find arbitrary. In any case, do you give 'usrloc' a
> "thumbs up"? What does that even mean? :-)
> 
> Some modules are hybrids; they have some standalone functionality but
> are most commonly inputs into a higher-level usage, such as 'xhttp' and
> its relationship to 'jsonrpcs', or the various presence_* or pua_*
> subcomponents, some of the auth_* components, ims_*, etc.
> 
> d. Pure API dependencies of other modules - these expose internal APIs
> used by other modules and provide no standalone functionality others.
> One can debate whether 'usrloc' falls into this category, but certainly,
> 'dmq' is a good example of this, as are the various 'db_*' connectors,
> and maybe 'keepalive'.
> 
> e. Niche programmatic functionality - 'htable', 'cfgutils', 'jansson',
> 'async', etc. This category entails additional programmatic constructs
> relevant to the "software engineering" aspect of writing config/route
> script or how processing is done, but do not provide any external
> services or interfaces as such.
> 
> f. Broadly environmental - subtly alter the overall way that SIP
> messages are processed, or add support for new kinds of transports, etc.
> This would include 'tls', 'ws', 'outbound', and the 'topo{h,s}' modules.
> 
> g. Language / API / interpreter connectors - 'app_*' modules.
> 
> h. Highly specific functionality - most other modules fall into this.
> But some of the functionality is fairly high-level, e.g. 'rtpengine',
> while others are more low-level and closer to category E, such as
> 'mqueue'.
> 
> 
> Anyway, the point here is that I don't think a vehicle to provide
> community guidance about which components to use, or which would purport
> to rank them somehow, can be meaningfully separated from the equally
> vital need to create some kind of taxonomy of modules or, more
> generally, adequate categories of thought within which such
> conversations should take place. Kamailio documentation lacks a clear
> and distinct "metaphysics" in this sense.
> 
> -- Alex
> 
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 09:55:41AM +0100, Daniel-Constantin Mierla wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > starting to continue the discussions here on mailing lists about some of
> > the approached topics during the last IRC meeting -- there will be
> > couple of them.
> > 
> > The one now is about finding and deploying a ranking/rating system that
> > could eventually help community members to make decisions easier in
> > regard to what components to use in their voip systems.
> > 
> > The need was exemplified by user verticelo with the dificulty to decide
> > what KEMI scripting language to use. While maintaining all the app_xyz
> > are expected to be easy, at least I know that for those I created, the
> > arguments were also from the perspective of the community. Like what
> > others are using, so one can expect good assistance, hints and share of
> > knowledge via community forums. This can be also extended to related
> > tools, like what people use for shared IP high availability of kamailio,
> > preferred database servers, ...
> > 
> > This email is to ask if those that didn't participate to IRC devel
> > meeting find such system useful and, if there is a positive feedback, is
> > anyone aware of some OSS that we can deploy on kamailio.org for such
> > purpose? It should be something that allows posting a topic (title and
> > short description) along with a list of answers/options (each can be
> > again like a title and short description) and provide a way to rate the
> > options (like, thumbs up, starts, ...), eventually allowing also
> > comments for each option. I guess it sounds a bit like stackoverflow ...
> > 
> > Being users related, the email is sent only to sr-users, let's keep the
> > discussion on this mailing list.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Daniel
> > 
> > -- 
> > Daniel-Constantin Mierla -- www.asipto.com
> > www.twitter.com/miconda -- www.linkedin.com/in/miconda
> > Kamailio World Conference - May 6-8, 2019 -- www.kamailioworld.com
> > Kamailio Advanced Training - Mar 25-27, 2019, in Washington, DC, USA -- www.asipto.com
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > sr-users at lists.kamailio.org
> > https://lists.kamailio.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sr-users
> 
> -- 
> Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC
> 
> Tel: +1-706-510-6800 / +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) 
> Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
> 
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC

Tel: +1-706-510-6800 / +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) 
Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/