I've been wanting to put off this conversation until we get s solid first-generation release out, but ...
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Yes, Dave, the informal plan is to use acs-service-contract in the way you describe.
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I'm not terribly interested in trying to support *two* interpackage integration strategies. Neophytos and Kapil have been doing some thinking about integrating SOAP/XML-RPC services into OpenACS 4 so it's not as though this issue is being ignored.
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At the moment I'm concerned that it would be very easy to get distracted by chasing what are admittedly a bunch of cool possibilities for future work. Unfortunately, ACS 4.x as inherited somewhat resembles what's left behind after the sewer backs up, and I dearly want to see the mess cleaned up as much as possible, as soon as possible, so we can have a reliable technology base to build upon.
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If I'm coming across as a bit of a grinch here, you can be certain it's not because I'm not interested in implementing a much better framework for interoperability between packages within OpenACS, and OpenACS sites with remote servers. I just want to get a solid release shoved out the door!<p>
Neophytos and I have discussed restructuring around acs service contract. My response has been of the "yes, of course, we should do that but , umm ... does OpenFTS work yet? We need that first!" (you can substitue a long list of strings for "OpenFTS" without changing my point!) We left off in agreement that we should start a public discussion about how we might want to use acs service contract as a restructuring tool at the point where we have a solid beta release of OpenACS 4 bundled and out the door.<p>
Note I said "beta", not "final" - I'm not being entirely anal, I hope!<p>
Entirely by coincidence Neophytos has
<a href="/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0003B8&topic_id=12&topic=OpenACS%204%2e0%20Design"> posted</a> a reference to a
paper discussing contracts which he thinks is really cool. I plan to read it, maybe you folks would like to, too?
Comments should probably go into the thread he started rather than here, since it's entirely about OpenACS 4 design ...
