Deploying on multiple clouds provides the choice to select the best provider and reduces vendor lock. This is a big win for our community! Roy Rubin, CEO Varien/Magento eCommerce
We’ll kick things off with a general discussion around what the Simple Cloud API is, and specifically how it can make your life in the cloud simpler.
Reply from Wil Sinclair on Oct 5, 2009
I've been asked on several occasions whether the Simple Cloud API is an alternative to deltacloud. Because deltacloud focuses on elastic cloud services such as EC2 and Rackspace Servers while the Simple Cloud API provides a common interface for services that are used at application runtime, such as SimpleDB and Azure Queue Storage.
Reply from Wil Sinclair on Oct 15, 2009
All cloud providers have constraints on configuration values and data that we should track on to ensure portability. Should we add validators to the API to reflect these constraints? Should we add a method to introspect these constraints for apps that might want to notify users of the constraints before values are submitted? We could create an optional validation chain with Zend_Validate. This would self-document these constraints, making a handy reference for developers as a side effect. The downside is that we’d have to keep up with changes in these constraints. One could argue, however, that these constraints are part of the API that we need to stay current on anyways. Also, do these constraints belong in the client libs themselves? If so, might implementing them break backwards compatibility? ,Wil
Reply from Wil Sinclair on Oct 15, 2009
Should we add an API for modules specific to particular cloud vendors? One of the mandates of the project is to keep the API compliant with all cloud vendors. But this can severely limit the functionality available in parts of the API. If we create an extension API, developers will still be aware when they are using a vendor-specific feature. What would such an API look like? ,Wil