0.2 "Architecture" Release: Purpose & Goals

Purpose:

• Design and implement key areas of infrastructure and platform such that:
  • we will not have to rewrite major chunks of the product because of poor architecture or design
  • our platform is finally beginning to be interesting for open source developers to start contributing and writing code
• Start design and implementation of three of our four key killer capabilities:
  • Document Architecture
  • Agent Framework
  • Sharing and Collaboration
• Expand and better inform and leverage our open source community

Goals:

• Quality: 0.2 is still a pre-alpha preview, and relatively free of "data integrity" quality requirements.
  • Eliminate the need to restart the app and re-build the database, no crashing, no blurbling on stderr, things like that.
  • Fix important 0.1 bugs (especially wxWindows cross-platform issues)
• Platform:
  • Demonstrate end-to-end data handling. Have support for only some fairly basic level of data expressiveness, but for each aspect of that expressiveness, have it be handled consistently across all the parts of Chandler.
  • data model -- Have a strawman data model that describes Chandler data
  • Python mapping -- Have a mapping to Python objects that can represent Chandler data
  • Add and edit attributes on-the-fly for any information type.
  • Identify and demonstrate a storage architecture
  • build on 0.1 to develop a generalized view sharing framework
• Key architecture projects we want to unveil and demonstrate in 0.2:
  • Data Framework (based off: RepositoryFramework including:
    • PIM schema
    • Data Model
    • Storage
    • Queries
    • remote repository access
    • Object cache [@@@maybe]
    • Sharing infrastructure [@@@maybe]
    • Sample parcel(s) to demonstrate data framework (perhaps repository viewer?)
  • Agent Framework including:
    • Notification Framework
    • Agent management
    • Agent viewer
    • Agent bar
    • Jabber Approval agent to demonstrate agent framework
  • Sharing and Collaboration
    • Upgrade current parcels to reflect improvements in data and viewer parcel frameworks
  • Early preview of Document Architecture [@@@ Michael to discuss with John what this entails]
    • Early demonstrate of Document Architecture in a simple repository viewer
    • [@@@ Michael to discuss with Katie if calendar detail view should still done given pared down work on viewer parcel and document architecture]
  • Thread model [@@@ maybe]
• Other important architecture projects to be worked on later in 0.3:
  • Full-blown document architecture including new widgets such as Outline Widget and utilized in all shipping viewer parcels
  • Security
  • Discovery
  • Search (both attribute-based search and free text search)
  • Parcel Framework
  • Identity Management
  • Extend Viewer Parcel framework (many planned changes such as 3-pane view support to be subsumed by document architecture)
  • Recognizer Framework
  • HTML framework
  • Thread model (if not done in 0.2)

• Community goals for 0.2 are
  • Communicate and get feedback about our core development and open source methodology
  • Provide key architecture documents to community for vetting and feedback including:
    • Data Framework
      • PIM Schema
      • Data Model
      • Data Framework tutorial for third-party parcel writers
      • @@@ what else?)
    • Agent Framework
      • Notification Framework
      • Agent Framework tutorial for third-party agent parcel writers
    • Document Architecture design and specification
    • Viewer Parcel Sharing framework
  • Get community to write sample ViewerParcels^? and provide feedback/validation for framework
  • Community outreach: Arrive at phase II for several key hub, spoke and documentation projects [@@@ check with Mitchell]

For Risks & Issues, see DotTwoReleaseIssueSummary

A more detailed breakdown of features and tasks based on this strawman proposal is available in spreadsheet format.

-- ChaoLam - 04 May 2003