DBus for Generic Data Access Methods?

[Dimitris Kogias]

> Therefore it'd require a lot of standardisation to create such a thing
> where these all would be just another device of type X. If this was
> possible then we *could* have a dbus address that has a program that
> could advertise these features. Like this:
> 
> /xx/yy/zz  NETWORKING_FEATURE
> /xx/yy/zzz GPS_FEATURE
> /zz/xx/yy  GPS_FEATURE
> 
> And programmers could then use just one of the GPS_FEATURES and not care
> about which actual device they are using. But, this is not a dbus issue.

This could be done with a collection of translator/adapter/proxy
app[let]s, if the target app cannot be modified to speak the standard
DBus-based API (or if it knows nothing about DBus but is otherwise
reachable).

For some of these adapters a little config (e.g. GPS service selection)
would be required.

In some cases, adapting an app's [DBus] API may take more than 1:1
translation.  Apps may be structured differently so that what one does
with a synchronous request-reply interaction, another does
asynchronously using signals.

D.