Do I have to completely rewrite my applications as SmartFrog components in order to use SmartFrog?
No. In fact it’s generally fairly easy to write simple SmartFrog components that “wrap” or encapsulate non-SmartFrog things. For example, we’ve done this with the Apache web server where we created simple SmartFrog components that are capable of installing, configuring, starting, stopping and uninstalling the Apache system. This allows us to completely manage the Apache system from SmartFrog – to install it on a specific system, to configure it correctly, to start and stop the system and to connect it in to other system components, all of which can be driven from a system description in the SmartFrog language. One caveat about this approach is that it does rely on the encapsulated system being cooperative – in the sense that controlling it must be possible via an API or command line scripts. However, if everything to be done through a graphical user interface (GUI), this can cause problems for the types of automation that are required.
