[Kamailio-Users] [Kamailio-Devel] SIREMIS feedback

[Daniel-Constantin Mierla]

On 02/13/2009 07:59 PM, Alex Balashov wrote:
> Daniel-Constantin Mierla wrote:
>
>   
>> although we have discussed internally at asipto, I want to see opinions 
>> from others related to ability of displaying (eventually editing) config 
>> file in siremis.
>>     
>
> Do you mean just editing the text of the config?  Or do you mean editing 
> the config in some high-level way?
>   
simply editing, like we all usually do with vi/vim.


> You probably mean the former, but if by chance you mean the latter, I 
> personally would recommend staying away from this.  It seems like it 
> would be an unmanageable mess.
>   
I do mean former and I really would stay away from the second. It is 
just about simple text presentation of the config, eventually editing it 
as text instead of ssh+vim.

Cheers,
Daniel

> The problem is that Kamailio is far too polymorphic and extensible, and 
> there are as many ways to write a configuration as there are to skin a 
> cat.  Everyone's configuration file is going to have different 
> attributes, except in the respects in which they all must be common of 
> course.  But the applications vary immensely;  the config route script 
> is part of what makes the system such a powerful building block of SIP 
> telephony applications and platforms.
>
> This means you have to build and maintain another another parser and 
> lexer or hijack the existing one. Either way it would have to be 
> outboard and feed data into the PHP application as Bison/flex/friends 
> don't output PHP parsers.  Then, you are still left with the challenge 
> of interpreting the many thousands of permutations of configuration that 
> come out of the parser in various data structures, although you are 
> assisted here by the relative rigidity of the route script syntax in 
> contrast to, say, Perl.
>
> The other alternative would be to take the approach of many web 
> front-ends to complicated things;  have SIREMIS generate the 
> configuration out of a template, and produce a result that is rich with 
> meta-data.  This means it is not especially feasible to edit it manually 
> afterward;  you must use SIREMIS for all aspects of configuration, else 
> you break the meta-data and SIREMIS won't understand the configuration 
> anymore.  That in turn means you are now limited in capabilities to 
> merely the set of common things SIREMIS supports.  That is clearly a bad 
> idea that is anathema to the very essence of the purpose of the route 
> script.
>
> -- Alex
>
>   

-- 
Daniel-Constantin Mierla
http://www.asipto.com