Pointers: Device configuration schemas in XML?

Similar to XML, but perhaps a bit easier to read and parse I prefer a JSON like scripting language (for example):

t_Config server { user : rob server : xyzzy socket : 2222 dir_run : /u0/Meta/run file_pid : bLobStor.pid }

t_Config blobStore { dir_config : /u0/Meta/BlobStor.conf db_meta : /u0/Meta/BlobStor.meta filestore : [ /u0/Data/a /u0/Data/b /u0/Data/c /u0/Data/d /u0/Data/e ] }

This still gives key/value pairs, and the values can be [ lists of items ] ... Parsing takes about 20 lines of C code ... then a thin API can be used to get the values at runtime:

opt_init( config.cfg ) ;

str = opt_get_str( "filestore", 0 ) ; fs_list = opt_get_lst( "filestore" ) ; socket = opt_get_int( "socket" ) ; server = opt_get_str( "server" ) ;

One implementation note: write a wrapper around strsep() which parses your blob or input stream, and returns a list of values, including "quote strings" or 'quoted strings' as a single item.

Simplifies life greatly (assumes C).

HTH, Rob Sciuk

You might explore how Jaluna approached this. IIRC, Jaluna 1 is still "open"

What I'm missing here is how this solves the interdependence problems. What you showed there seemed to me to be very similar to what I showed in the example - gives you a description of the full range of each control, but doesn't let you disable or limit specific settings based on other current settings.

Did I miss something?

No, my brain-fart, sorry.

Still, if you are trying to associate one control to another in the config file, you'll ultimately have to essentially impement a domain specific language.

As an analogy, I also implemented database triggers in the base language, and these perform in a manner somewhat similar to what you describe ... though in my trivial case, they simply generate the SQL/DDL to create a trigger upon a database table to do the heavy lifting ... here's an example:

t_Trigger Castor.ins_filTable { source : filTable target : wrkTable action : insert when : after insert : [ Added new.device new.inode ] }

t_Trigger Castor.upd_filTable { source : filTable when : after action : update vars : hash target : wrkTable insert : [ Modified old.device old.inode ] }

t_Trigger Castor.upd_genfile { source : filTable when : after action : update vars : [ mtime hash osize ] target : filGen insert : [ old.device old.inode old.mtime old.hash old.osize ] }

In your case, you'd simply have to define conditionals which would modify the attributes of the target device.