Tools and Framework Development and Deployment Guidelines . What is The Best Approach?
Hi guys!
Suppose you developed a tool, framework, library on InterSystems ObjectScript for InterSystems Data Platform, share it via Open Exchange and want people to install it.
What is the best strategy if it is a library and supposed to be called from different namespaces?
Here are the following thoughts:
1. Tool's developer should be able to use globals to read/store data the tool needs.
2. Tool's consumer should be confident, that the thing he/she installs will not harm the application's data.
3. A tool should be callable from any application's namespace.
4. Tool's installation(in general) should not request manual security changes (e.g. grant the write access to IRISLIB) and %YourClass is not an option.
5. It's easy to uninstall the tool - just delete the namespace/database (maybe delete some web-apps too).
In this case I see the following scenario acceptable the most:
1. Every new tool should install itself into a new special namespace and database for your tool. E.g. COMMUNITYLIB. Use %Installer fro then.
2. If you need the tool to be called from other application namespaces, map classes to a %All.
Here are the good examples of this type of tool installations:
RESTForms, DeepSeeWeb, MONLBL - install itself into new namespaces/databases.
Not perfect examples:
WebTerminal, ClassExplorer - need write access to the %SYS namespace.
Thoughts?