[hobbit] Future of Hobbit

[s_aiello at comcast.net]

Henrik Stoerner wrote:
> Someone in this thread wrote that he was thinking of implementing a new
> web front-end. That would be fantastic! I would gladly drop support for
> the old static HTML files generated by bbgen in favor of a modernized
> web interface. And the web U/I is fairly independent from the rest of
> Hobbit, so it is easy to change.

I took a look at this a bit. The hardest part about this as I see it, would be 
pulling information from multiple data sources. For report data I could use 
bb commands (hobbitdxboard, or others), but then I would need to parse the 
server's bb-host file for page layouting. Which isn't a huge problem, just 
adds complication.

Also, I know you had talked about moving away from the bb-hosts file. So seems 
wasteful to move on this if it will be changed in the near future.

It would be intersting if the hobbitdxboard provided the data with the layout 
included too. But again this may add un-necessary complication.

<Page>
 <Name>root</Name>
 <Status>green</Status>
 <LastChanged>Wed Jan 30 07:36:10 EST 2008</LastChanged>
 <Title>
   <Name>windows servers</Name>
 </Title>
 <Page>
   <Name>WinServers</Name>
   <Status>green</Status>
   <LastChanged>Wed Jan 30 07:30:10 EST 2008</LastChanged>
   <Group>
     <Name>OldHardware</Name>
     <ServerStatus>
       <Name>Server1</Name>

Above is just a sample idea. Not sure if XML is the best vehicle to feed this 
data. But if you would like to support 3rd party GUIs (web or other) not only 
should the server statuses be available, but also the layout. XML is nice 
because a XSLT GUI can be done pretty easily..  putting a template over the 
XML. Though I am not a huge XML fan.. not sure what would be the best way to 
quickly export this data.

 ~Steve