[Infrastructures] state machines

[Wesley Craig]

On 19 Sep 2006, at 23:52, Daniel Hagerty wrote:
>> Oh sure, I agree with that.  But let me ask you: What is more likely
>> to have the CNAME dependency problem?  A recent backup restored, or
>> an old system image with months or years worth of changes applied?
>> Perhaps you see what I'm getting at.
>
>     You're presumably suggesting that the backup (since it's just data
> at this level of abstraction) is more robust than a series of hand
> crafted imperative statemnts that you execute in proper order.

Without getting into "which is better," which is more likely to have  
the CNAME dependency problem?

>     The two both have their places.  A backup is a large relatively
> opaque blob; code that supposedly reproduces the backup is
> introspectable in a way the backup is not.  One being better than the
> other is dependant on the context of use.

On the one hand, it's hard to disagree that different solutions are  
useful in different situations.  Your opacity statement is just hand  
waving, tho.  Discussing which specific situations are more amenable  
to which specific solutions would be useful.

:wes