openstack team mailing list archive

[George Reese <george.reese@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The other piece of the puzzle is that it is very easy to keep a client consistent with the API; it's very hard to keep an implementation up-to-date.

I've built an EC2 compatible API and the problem is that understanding what has changed in the API (and it changes fairly frequently) is hard. On the other hand, AWS is great at not breaking clients. So, when they roll out a change, it doesn't impact clients; but anyone implementing an EC2-compatible API will immediately be broken for clients taking advantage of new features. Furthermore, it may not be entirely clear from your end what it is that broke things.

-George

On Jul 9, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Sandy Walsh wrote:

> Ok, so let's look at this from another perspective ... how far away are we?
> 
> I thought our EC2 binding was pretty good (admittedly, I don't use it). 
> 
> Are we radically out in left field or is this a game of inches?
> 
> Any hardcore EC2 users care to comment?
> 
> -S
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Jorge Williams
> Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 2:28 AM
> To: Sandy Walsh
> Cc: Soren Hansen; openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Openstack] Cross-zone instance identifiers in EC2 API - Is it worth the effort?
> 
> On Jul 8, 2011, at 10:44 PM, Sandy Walsh wrote:
>> 
>> Wow, really? Is EC2 really that sporadic/chaotic?
>> 
>> I have to plead ignorance because I don't know where the rubber meets the road, but that kinda surprises me.
> 
> 
> I'm not saying that.  In fact let me say that I don't think the Windows API itself is sporadic or chaotic. I used to be a Windows dev way back in the day and I never got that impression.
> 
> The problem is that the Windows API is not open and is not really designed to be implemented by others.  The Wine folks (and the ReactOS folks) have been working really hard to implement it for a long time.  And with good reason, there are  a lot of incentives to have a free Windows compatible  OS.  The task the Wine folks have is very hard though. There are no reference implementations for the Windows API, so you can't look at the code, you have to replicate bugs in the implementation and bugs in client apps etc, oh and do you really think MS wants a free Windows compatible OS on the market? -- you have to account for them messing with you as well.
> 
> Soren was suggesting that supporting EC2 was much like writing an implementation of HTTP or SMTP (both open specs with open reference implementations).  All I'm saying is that reverse engineering a living, rapidly changing, closed system and writing another system that behaves like it exactly (bugs and all) is not the same thing as implementing an open spec -- it's harder.
> 
> -jOrGe W.
> 
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--
George Reese - Chief Technology Officer, enStratus
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enStratus: Governance for Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds - @enStratus - http://www.enstratus.com
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