[seek-dev] registry login problem

[Chad Berkley]

Hi,

I found what I consider to be a bug in the design of the ecogrid 
registry today.  The problem arises when you attempt to login to the 
registry so that you can register a node.  The registry is a singleton 
running on knb.ecoinformatics.org.  knb.ecoinformatics.org has it's own 
set of other ecogrid services including the authentication service.  My 
problem is that I'm using a different server 
(library.kepler-project.org) which has its own set of ecogrid services 
installed (including auth).  If I authenticate against my server, I 
cannot use the same sessionid to login to the registry.  I would have to 
login again to the knb auth service (which has a different url) then i 
could use the registry.  This is a hassle because you basically have to 
keep track of two sets of urls even though you really only want to use 
one of them.

I propose, since the registry is a singleton, that the registry have its 
own auth() method which could be called from the registryClient.  That 
way, you would only need the url of the registry and all functions 
necessary for the registry could be performed from that one url.  It 
makes the design cleaner, IMHO.

Does anyone have any other ideas for this?  Should I just suck it up and 
  manage another set of urls?  What do you think?

chad