[Oslc-Automation] Extra automation concepts

[Nick Edgar]

In the last call, we were asked to give our thoughts on the concepts other 
than the automation plan, results and notifications.
c.f. http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/ResourceDefinitions

Here are my thoughts, based on my experience with RTC Build and Build 
Forge (basically copied from my original comments in the spreadsheet, with 
some elaboration):

Automation Server: A server that maintains the available automation plans 
and results. 
Presumably this is the same server as the one you're issuing OSLC 
Automation requests to, though I suppose it's possible that the OSLC API 
could be implemented by a fronting server.

Automation Engine: A process that coordinates the execution of an 
automation plan to produce a result, by delegating to one or more agents.
An automation server supports one or more automation engines.

Automation Agent: A process running on a particular 'worker' machine that 
executes a particular result or part thereof.
For example, Build Forge allows different steps of a build to run on 
different agents (possibly in parallel).

It should be understood that these are all just OSLC resources describing 
the underlying processes / servers.  For example, it's not expected that 
asking for info about an automation agent actually contacts the machine on 
which that agent is running, it just returns the info known about that 
agent, as maintained by the automation server.

Nick Edgar
RTC Build component lead
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