Monday, March 14, 2011

WWA Development Notes

Some notes about the current WWA project:

  1. I have no plans on adding the ability to modify SCCM site options.  Those are maintained in the site control file (SCF) and interfacing with that via a web interface, while it can be done, would require more time and effort than I want to devote to it (being a free project and all that).  This goes for site boundaries, senders, discoveries and so on.  I may do something with site status summarizers and alerts, but I'm not sure yet.
  2. The interfaces to Active Directory from a web platform are somewhat limited, and that's by design.  I understand the logic and rationale behind that actually.  Querying AD is one thing, but executing changes to it from the web is a bit different, at least from "classic" ASP.  I really don't enjoy coding with ASP.NET, and haven't had a reason to consider MVC or something off the wall like PHP or Ruby or their .NET variants either.  It's ASP or nothing for now.
  3. The scope of features and capabilities can be dramatically larger and broader with the use of a dedicated database, but I'm not sure it's worth adding that layer on this right now.  The actual production implementations, from which most of this is derived (in bits and pieces), does in fact involve SQL Server resources.  This allows for greater custom control over offline processing, logging and tracking, alerts, and general automation features.  If this project were to actually go somewhere I would be more than happy to pursue that direction, but for now it remains off the table.
  4. I am fully and completely (double reduntant statement, I know) of how "lite" this project is.  The features for managing user access control (role-based or otherwise) are intentionally left out, at least for now.  Therefore, users must consider their own approach to controlling access to any implementations out there.  If interest picks up, I may put more work into role-based access management.  It's really not difficult to add, but I'm focusing the little time I have to spend on this in other areas for now.
  5. I'm trying to keep this project XHTML 1.0 compliant and cross-browser compliant.  I routinely test it with IE9, Firefox 4 and Chrome 10 and it seems to work fine in all three of those.  I know that some of the pages are not 100% compliant, but who cares.  If this turns into something worthwhile (I keep saying that, don't I?) I will address that.  For now, it works ok.
  6. I have no intention of chasing SCCM 2012 at this point.  I'm not rejecting the possibility, but at this time I have no reason to even consider it.
  7. The amount of feedback so far is not very promising, but that could mean a lot of things, so I'm holding off a bit longer before deciding on where this project will go.  I'm pegging March 31 as a possible Go/No-Go date.  If interest doesn't pick up by then, this will be taken down and kept for personal use only.  It wouldn't be the first project to be vaporized.  My son's baseball season is about to start, and as the weather warms up, I will do my best to spend less time indoors, behind a computer.  I think this is a fairly decent start for a project of this type, so who knows.

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