creating things in CAMP

[Alex Heneveld <alex.heneveld@cloudsoftcorp.com>]

Hi folks,

There was discussion today about POSTing to Templates to create 
instances.  There seem to be a few different ideas on how this would 
work.  I wanted to canvas opinion before opening an issue (if indeed we 
need one).

I think we all agree you can POST a PDP to Platform to create an Assembly.

But:

0) Can you POST to an AssemblyTemplate (to create an Assembly) ?
1) Can you POST to an ApplicationComponentTemplate (to create an 
ApplicationComponent) ?
2) Can you POST to a PlatformComponentTemplate (to create a 
PlatformComponent) ?

And finally:

3) Do we say (in the spec) what the result of such a POST is? (Could (1) 
return an Assembly ?)
4) If (1) and/or (2) is _permitted_ by the spec, is it permitted for a 
compliant implementation to refuse such requests (ie only support (0); 
or even to support only PDP-initiated deployments) ?

My thinking had implicitly been that consumers would do (0) and *not* 
(1) or (2).  The AC's and PC's are created by the platform in response, 
and every instance is "owned" by an assembly.  And the PDP is a 
convenience for supplying potentially a bunch of ACT's, PCT's, and an 
AssemblyTemplate.

My read now though is that (1) and (2) are permitted.  So you could post 
to an ACT and get an AC back, and if this ACT (say it was a WAR file) 
had a requirement for some PC (say something with a WAR_appserver 
capability), there would be a PC created (or perhaps re-used) and the 
WAR installed there.  All makes sense.  But could we end up with these 
things running without any Assembly ... and is that a problem?

It would be very helpful to know what people are thinking here!

Thanks
Alex