[QMF] QMF Development Roadmap

[Ted Ross <tr...@redhat.com>]

QMF, the Qpid Management Framework, is an abstraction built on Qpid 
messaging to allow object and service oriented remote management.  It 
consists of three things:

    1) A set of APIs for various languages,
    2) A protocol that defines message exchange patterns and 
message-body formats, and
    3) A service, embedded in the C++ broker, that is required to enable 
the operation of QMF.

There is an effort in progress to improve the architecture of QMF by 
making the following changes and improvements:

    1) Remove the requirement for broker-resident functionality,
    2) Change QMF message-bodies from a packed binary format to an 
amqp-map format,
    3) Support operation over federated networks of brokers,
    4) Make the identification of agents and objects more flexible, and
    5) Improve the scalability and security of QMF.

By removing the requirement for broker-resident services, we simplify 
the operation, improve scalability, and allow QMF to run over any AMQP 
messaging broker.

Moving from a packed binary data format to a map-based format improves 
the flexibility of the protocol.  Map-based formats are easy to extend 
and evolve without breaking backward compatibility.

Support for federation allows a managed agent or a managing console to 
gain access to an entire multi-broker network with a single broker 
connection.

There is a new project page devoted to this effort on the Qpid Wiki 
(http://qpid.apache.org/qmfv2-project-page.html).  Please feel free to 
review, comment, and contribute.

-Ted


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