[asterisk-users] Any reason to *not* use AEL? (Also, MixMonitor q)

[Sherwood McGowan]

Mindaugas Kezys wrote:
> Thank you for your opinion.
>
> Then my question would follow: how to build human-friendly system which will
> use GUI and lets user use that system without messing with .conf files?
>
> From my experience large and complicate systems can't be effectivelly
> managed without Realtime and I see no way how to put AEL into DB. Maybe it's
> possible?
>
> We are storing "exact-match" info into DB and all _X., etc stuff we have in
> extensions.conf. So no speed issues with large systems.
>
> Also: Any reason to "not" use extensions.conf?
>
> What AEL can do better then extensions.conf?
>
> Many people still use vi. Because it can do everything what they want. Same
> here with extensions.conf.
>
> Regards,
> Mindaugas Kezys
> http://www.kolmisoft.com
>
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
>> bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Steve Murphy
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:02 PM
>> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
>> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Any reason to *not* use AEL? (Also,
>> MixMonitor q)
>>
>> On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 09:33 -0500, Sherwood McGowan wrote:
>>     
>>> Mindaugas Kezys wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Does Asterisk Realtime support AEL?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Mindaugas Kezys
>>>>
>>>> http://www.kolmisoft.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
>>>> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] *On Behalf Of
>>>> *Gonzalo Servat
>>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 03, 2008 5:07 PM
>>>> *To:* Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [asterisk-users] Any reason to *not* use AEL? (Also,
>>>> MixMonitor q)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Eric Wieling <eric at fnords.org
>>>> <mailto:eric at fnords.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     AEL in 1.4 was the first version of AEL that most people
>>>>         
>> consider
>>     
>>>>     "stable".  Since not many people uses AEL, you won't get nearly
>>>>         
>> as
>>     
>>>>     much
>>>>     (if any) community support compared to if you are using the
>>>>     non-AEL syntax.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Really? Why would anyone want to write a dialplan using the old
>>>> extensions.conf syntax? That sort of syntax personally drove me
>>>>         
>> nuts
>>     
>>>> (and real messy). I've got my entire dialplan on AEL (using
>>>>         
>> Asterisk
>>     
>>>> 1.6.0).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>>         
>>> Not sure what you mean, but if you mean realtime dialplan, then no,
>>> you can't use AEL for that. However, we might wish to see if Murf
>>> knows if this can be done.
>>>
>>>       
>> extensions.conf is like assembler; it's a very strict, line per
>> instruction format, 4 fields per line, that is able to be read in by
>> normal config file parsers. It is in turn compiled into the internal
>> asterisk data structures.
>>
>> AEL is more free form. Storing the dial plan in AEL format in a db
>> would be pretty useless. However, the extensions.conf isn't so bad in a
>> db, as it still has the 4 columns, row per instruction sort of format.
>>
>> But in general, I have to ask, as a programmer, if it's really, really
>> a good idea to store code in a db. The dialplan is a mixture of both
>> dialplan code and data, in the form of extensions.
>>
>> But storing dialplan "code", as in a sequence of application calls, is
>> a slow way to execute your dialplan code.
>>
>> And storing patterned extensions (extensions starting with _, like
>> _10XXXXXXXXX or whatever), is a really slow way to match pattern
>> extensions. My advise to everyone is this: Realtime is great, but don't
>> store extension patterns in there, and don't store your dialplan code
>> in there, if you can help it. It'd be much better to use your db to
>> store 'exact' extension data. Trying to find the best pattern match via
>> realtime is excruciatingly slow, as it calls up every extension in the
>> db for that context, and then decides on the best match.  DB's do a
>> great job at storing large numbers of uniquely keyed data that you can
>> find via exact matches. So, use a general exten patten in your
>> dialplan, and then do a DB() lookup from there.
>>
>> If you find a bug in your dialplan code, you've got to change it in two
>> places, in the realtime db, and you'd best have it in your original
>> source as well, in case you need to reload/recover your db or whatever.
>> A DB is a lousy source-code control system. Use cvs or subversion or
>> git or something to store your dialplan code instead. That way, you can
>> back out change sets, etc, and track your changes in a much more
>> practical way.
>>
>> Just my two cents.
>>
>> murf
>>
>> --
>> Steve Murphy
>> Software Developer
>> Digium
>>     
>
>
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There's not really a reason to NOT use extensions.conf, other than it's 
spaghetti code, and not as readable. You CAN write a gui that alters the 
*.ael files, that's how a lot of the GUIs work for extensions.conf, they 
modify the file. Putting your dialplan into a database is needless in 
about 90% of cases I've run across.

-- 
Sherwood McGowan
VoIP / Telecom Solutions
sherwood.mcgowan at gmail.com