Why are there "commands"?

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I don't really understand the purpose / utility of the "command" level of
abstraction in Nagios configuration.  (2.10; we're still on Centos 4.7).

To define a new service to check particular Windows web services we've
written, I define a service, and then it has to refer to a command, and
over in the command I have to hard-code the parameters needed to test this
specific service -- so in fact I need a separate command for each service.
 This seems, to me, to just introduce confusion, and separate bits of
information that belong together.

Is this just a historical artifact that in fact doesn't make much sense,
or are there lots of cases where it's useful and makes it easier or
clearer to do what you want?

(I'm fine with "that's the way it works, but it doesn't really make much
sense as it turns out", I've got plenty of that in my own code; I'm just
looking for more understanding, in case it makes more sense than I've so
far figured out.)

As a broader question, are there documents that give more of a logical
overview of Nagios, explaining how and why things are broken up and how
they work together?
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info


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