Alan DeKok wrote:
Yes. There are two problems:
1) dynamically changing data structures as they are being used 2) how to tell the server which data structure to change.
(1) has to be solved before (2) becomes useful. (2) can be done by any number of means. The reason I've been leaning towards and SQL-like interface is because I don't want to re-invent yet another CLI.
We can always write a simple program that translates a sane (i.e. humanly readable) CLI to SQL. The utility of SQL comes in leveraging the large amount of tools that are ready-made to perform data manipulation.
I like when the things are simple: edit the config files with your favorite editor, and run a command to reload the server. (kill -HUP or something else) I think an SQL interface would add a considerable administrative overhead. I can easily explain to the sysadmins in my site to copy template files to deploy new clients. Explaining to type SQL commands seems more difficult. Translating plain text files to SQL has a few issues issues, too. When you update a value on a running server, its runtime config is out of sync with its config files. Therefore I don't know how we could make sure that the "humanly readable" version is relevant or not. -- Nicolas Baradakis