Change commercial subscriptions to use new API

[Stuart Metcalfe]

The API for commercial subscriptions has been moved. Please update Launchpad to use it instead of the current one.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

If it has moved without backwards compat, this will need to be
critical, otherwise folk cannot refresh their subscriptions.

Stuart - is there a backwards compat layer in place?

[Stuart Metcalfe (stuartmetcalfe)]

We currently have both the new and the old APIs available. The old API is running on a server which is nearing EOL. I believe the two APIs are largely compatible and we've provided a Python wrapper so switching in LP should be fairly simple - James J. can confirm this. The critical constraint will come from IS as they know exactly when the old server needs to be taken down.

[James Jesudason (jamesj)]

To clarify...

The current API that is used is acting as a proxy to forward calls to Salesforce. So LP does an xmlrpc call, which then gets converted to an SF request and then returns a response. So the proxy is acting as a middle-man.

The new code removes the middle-man, allowing LP to talk directly to SF. Instead of making xmlrpc calls, we've provided a class with the same method names. So instead of calling 'getAllVouchers' via xmlrpc, you can use the provided class method 'getAllVouchers'.

Also, the proxy is using some outdated code to talk to Salesforce. So the provided class replaces this with python-suds to do the SOAP login and httplib2 to do the REST data calls.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Lp is insulating users from the saleforce proxy. The connection was/is unreliable so Lp does as much work upfront to ensure commercial users get what they need, then Lp takes the slow path of trying to get the information into salesforce. Lp issues commercial subscriptions without salesforce or the Canonical store. The store/salesfore is used just to extend a subscription

95% of commercial customers are Canonical and its partners, and they do not purchase from the store Lp grants the commercial subscription and the commercial admins extend it to forever. The 3 dozen non-Canonical commercial users are affected. The ridiculous steps needed to purchased, receive, and apply vouchers required commercial admins to intervene 50% of the time to review. Lp now accepts the the user/voucher credentials as proof of purchase and extends the subscriptions. A background job then tell sales force...users don't see the timeouts.