Services framework thoughts

[seghcder]

Some thoughts as i was integrating a new service. Not sure if you would prefer these as individual issues or if this is ok to add to backlog (if you agree of course :-) )...

• Differentiate user vs system services (Wikipedia vs REST)?
• Manage service "connection" status (during init or if service becomes available / unavailable later)
• Could the user query what services are "available" / connected?
• Common authorisation model for services?
• Common service name / description that can be included in the response when the user asks "What services are available"
• Common help response if the user asks "HELP Servicename"
• Should there just be one interface (ask_question) from the AIML side, or allow multiple so that there might be several AIML<>service interface points per "class"

Cheers

Sean

[keiffster]

Answers to each

• Differentiate user vs system services (Wikipedia vs REST)?
  KS - What would be the purpose of the differentiation ?

• Manage service "connection" status (during init or if service becomes available / unavailable later)
  KS - The service class should maintain its own connection status and provide appropriate retry options, plus default response if down.

• Could the user query what services are "available" / connected?
  KS - Certainly possible, would need its own grammar and probably an extension to list the services in configuration.
  KS - In terms of available/connected, could extend the service interface with a ping() or health() method that could be called to get current status from a grammar

• Common authorisation model for services?
  KS - Not sure as there is no common authorisation model. Some might use OAuth, others userid/password, others HTTP headers. However this may require a way to store better configuration information in the service definition - More work required here and I would be interested to see how your implementation pushes this forward

• Common service name / description that can be included in the response when the user asks "What services are available"
  KS - Probably the same as ping()/health(), implement an info() method which returns a well defined information object

• Common help response if the user asks "HELP Servicename"
  KS - I would push this into the grammar as thats the best place to store answers to questions. I would just create a servicename.aiml file with pattern HELP servicename

• Should there just be one interface (ask_question) from the AIML side, or allow multiple so that there might be several AIML<>service interface points per "class"
  KS - Tough one as that would require a level of modification to the sraix tag implementation and some identification of the method to call.

[seghcder]

User vs system services - I think I misunderstood the REST service as the REST client. Now I understand there are two REST oriented parts. One is the REST Client and another the Generic REST Service. Now makes sense.

By authorisation model, I meant more within ProgramY itself. At the moment Program Y assumes that if you can reach it, you can use it. In a SkypeForBusiness enterprise context, I need to check that the user connecting -

• Is a known user and is allowed to use the bot
• Is permitted to use all or only some services
• Is a super-user who can ask questions like who is connected to the bot right now, service online/offline commands, send a message to all connected users, or even tell the bot to quit gracefully.

Will post another topic on this, but I wonder if this is more a "discussion" topic vs an issue topic? Not sure what the best forum in Github for these :-)

[seghcder]

Rest all makes sense.