[Asterisk-Users] Re: What about a higher level configurationlanguage

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:49:04 +0100, Chris Lee
<cslee-list at cybericom.co.uk> wrote:
> While sorting out the low level storage it would be good to keep in mind
> that some of us may want our configuration stored in an application
> server producing a "dynamic dial plan" which can also be central to an
> organizations PABX system;

Well, dynamic language environments typically owe their dynamic nature
to the very fact that they keep code separate from presentation and
presentation is a layer on top of the code storage layer.

Take Lisp, Scheme, Dylan or even Python as examples for that.

A plain-text-source-code-is-all-we-got model it is not only less
efficient and more elaborate to handle, but it also makes it more
difficult to achieve a truly dynamic environment in which to insert
new objects at runtime.

> An example of this in use:
> call originates from device-abc
> Dialplan produces device-abc context for call to go into
> in that context the number the device has called is provided as an
> extension with a suitable set of dialplan rules, e.g. route to another
> number on another exchange or send out via PSTN or send to login system etc.

The question here is whether you want to create a new context by

1) generating the source code for it and reload (=parse and
re-interpret the source)

or

2) selectively inserting a new object of type context into the
underlying storage layer.


You can do it both ways, but I say #1 should be avoided and #2 is
favourable, thus the call for a layered architecture whereby the
storage layer is properly designed and implemented first.

rgds
benjk

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