[tac_plus] Re: Redesign?

[Kiss Gabor (Bitman)]

> group uber_manager {

:-D

> The example above is kinda bending over backwards in an effort not to depart 
> from the existing syntax only to show that I think it could *technically* be 
> done.  That being said, it's horribly convoluted.  A better solution might be to 
> add a basic if/then/else conditional construct with a little boolean logic 
> sprinkled in for good measure.  Something sorta like this:

> I kind of ignored inheritance here, but if you wanted to allow a "member = " 
> clause in a group definition, you could treat it essentially as a substitution 
> -- somewhat like an #include statement in C.  I realize the whole idea is a big 

Summary:
The current syntax is ineligible so a new procedural
language should be designed from the scratch.
Instead of calling external scripts we need a "TACACS+ parser" and
interpreter.
Syntax is not flexible enough or the interface between frontends
and backend is not well defined.

> change, but it still seems more straightforward than converting the whole 
> backend to SQL.  I suspect it would perform better than SQL too, but then again, 
> I haven't looked at the code, so maybe I'm way off base here...

John already has problems the current parser. I don't think he agrees
with design of a new language too.

Splitting frontends and backend has several advantage. But it works
only if the interface is clean.

Gabor