Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 05:36:55 +0000 From: Giao Nguyen <grail@functional.com> To: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: DNS vs. GUI? (was: Microsoft brainrot...) Message-ID: <19970928053655.29651@functional.com> In-Reply-To: <199709280502.XAA21135@obie.softweyr.ml.org>; from Wes Peters on Sat, Sep 27, 1997 at 11:02:57PM -0600 References: <19970927143934.ZN26834@uriah.heep.sax.de> <199709272127.OAA11524@usr08.primenet.com> <19970928101941.03210@lemis.com> <199709280502.XAA21135@obie.softweyr.ml.org>
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Wes Peters said: > > The "standard" DNS server setups are organized by record type, because > that is how DNS was developed. The record types evolved over time, new > ones were added, but everyone seems to have missed a critical point > here: what DNS *really does* is describe some *OBJECTS*. In the case of > DNS, the objects described are DOMAINS and HOSTS. This can be extended to match a lot of other data in your run of the mill Unix box. Users, groups, user classes, filesystems table, disk paritioning, etc. Creating a GUI application to manage these types of data is not a bad idea. However, the trick is representing the data correctly. I recently played with Digital Unix's dtadvfs utility. It took me forever to understand its representation of data. However, in 15 minutes I got a good enough understanding to add a slice into a advfs domain, without knowing a damn thing about the disk geometry. There are three problem domains in designing an interface for anything: * representation * mapping of real world to the representation * audience (erm, user competency) I don't want to sound like an HCI weenie because I'm not. HOWEVER, the closer you bring these two things together the better life will be. I for one, would *love* to see GUI utilities for administration of FreeBSD boxes out there. Would I use it? Not unless I had too. These tools should exist for those who are new to get up to speed, not meant as *the* interface for the guru's to use. We can finally get rid of that ridiculous argument of "Windows makes it so much easier ... " It doesn't matter what the interface is, as long as it makes sense. To me, DNS is a database. If you build a database utility that turns its data into DNS resource records then you're set. SQL -> BIND. Or Motif -> BIND. It doesn't matter. For large scale maintenance of BIND, vi is a lousy tool either way. For large scale anything, vi is a lousy tool. We're talking process automation here. Let's just drop this argument about GUI's. Let's just focus on tools to automate processes. We've got pw(8) for accounts. Why not something similar for other sort of tasks? (Why do I get the feeling I just asked for it?) -- Giao Nguyen
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