Peter et al.,
I've introduced support in GAIA for a new (non-standard, obviously)
message with the ID "ivo://plastic.starlink.ac.uk/gaia/execute".
By using this any PLASTIC-aware application can execute Tcl code in
a running PLASTIC-registered instance of GAIA in much the same way
as by using the current sockets mechanism.
I presume this is a good idea in general. It may in fact be the
most sensible PLASTIC way to do Starlink-specific things like
"load an NDF into GAIA", as previously discussed. There is however
an issue of security - PLASTIC has practically none, so in principle
you could get third parties executing malicious arbitrary Tcl code
on a remote machine running GAIA. For this reason I'll take it
out on request. I think we'll have to do something about PLASTIC
security in due course, but it won't be straight away.
While writing that last paragraph, I've realised that this is really
too dangerous to include, so I've commented the relevant code out
again :-(. However, this mail documents a possible addition once
the security holes are plugged.
Mark
--
Mark Taylor Astronomical Programmer Physics, Bristol University, UK
[log in to unmask] +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/
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