[asterisk-dev] XML-RPC dialplan interface

[Nir Simionovich]

Russell Bryant wrote:
> Nir Simionovich wrote:
>> Tilghman Lesher wrote:
>>> On Tuesday 28 April 2009 15:28:19 Nir Simionovich wrote:
>>>> 2. Adding an XML-RPC requester application to Asterisk - this is really
>>>> complex. I've got some preliminary design, but again, I'm a little
>>>> stomped as to where to begin.
>>> I'd love to hear how you've been progressing on this since AstriDevCon '08.
>> That's exactly the problem, I hadn't. Real life and lack of some proper 
>> kick starting kind'a got me stuck, so I hope the EuroDevCon will allow 
>> me to kickstart this thing back.
> 
> You say this is really complex.  I agree.  Furthermore, these issues
> have already been figured out a number of times for other programming
> languages (perl, python, whatever ..).  So, my question is, given that
> you can already handle this fairly easily in your programming language
> of choice and return the results to Asterisk via AGI, why is it worth
> the development effort to re-implement as a native operation for the
> Asterisk dialplan?
> 
Hi Russell,

   While I agree that external programming languages provide a simpler 
means and yields good results, the end game is still additional 
resources being consumed. For example, let's imagine that I would like 
to perform a status notifier from within the dialplan. In that case,
I would have one of the following available to me:

1. Do it via AGI or FastAGI - requires additional resources and
    processing.
2. Do it via CURL - requires a seperate GET based interface.
3. Devise a method to doing it via POST CURL, which is currently
    unavailable, thus, going back to number 1.
4. Devise a method of sending the information via a standard transport
    that can also be utilized in the application layer - namely, XML-RPC.

   Over the past 2 years, I've been dealing mainly with developing 
platforms that scale to thousands of channels. In that scale, any 
resources saved on the application side, immediately translate into 
server dollars. A better solution from within the dialplan itself, that 
requires less server resources, translates into a more economical 
solution - thus, making Asterisk more appealing to the carrier market.

-- 
Kind Regards,
   Nir Simionovich
   Asterisk Community Founder and Maintainer - Israel

   (e) nir.simionovich at gmail.com
   (w) http://www.simionovich.com