On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 12:28:42PM -0700, Dave Kuhlman wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 09:58:56AM -0700, Jeff Hobbs wrote:
> There seems to be (at least) two visions of AOLserver: > > 1. AOLserver is a complete Web application development > environment. You should do all your work with AOLserver tools, > for example, Tcl, the AOLserver Tcl API, ADP, etc. > > 2. AOLserver is "just" a Web server. It should allow and support > the use of external Web application development environments > frameworks, etc. For these uses AOLserver accepts HTTP > requests and delivers responses (from the Web application > framework). In this view, AOLserver is just an easy to > configure and fast way to deliver content via the HTTP > protocol. I think that is a false and non-useful dichotomy. AOLserver clearly is neither 1 *NOR* 2. It's not even close to a "complete web application development environement" - if it was OpenACS wouldn't exist. But neither is it "just" serving up content from other "application development environments"! If it was, OpenACS wouldn't NEED AOLserver at all, and would be easy to run using Apache or any other "just a web server" to push out the bits and bytes via HTTP. Even worse, this #1 vs. #2 distinction completely igonores AOLserver's other major strength, as an environment for rapidly developing high-performance, multi-threaded, network-aware server applications, to do more or less ANYTHING, whether they have anything to do with the web and HTTP or not. > The interface is SCGI. Information is at: > > http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/scgi/ > http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman/scgi-aol.html > http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman/scgi-aol-1.0a.zip That sounds useful. In the past, various people have wanted FastCGI in AOLserver, for exactly the same reasons. > 1. From the AOLserver point of view, scgi-aol provides a way that > AOLserver can be used to support Quixote Web applications. > > 2. From the AOLserver point of view, scgi-aol provides a way to > run other Web application frameworks on top of AOLserver > through a generic and efficient interface (SCGI). I only looked at the SCGI stuff briefly, but I don't see anything in their about bi-directional APIs or protocols to let the app server (Python/Quixote, whatever) really interact with the web server (AOLserver). AOLserver wouldn't be AOLserver without the APIs that let you really control stuff from Tcl. A FastCGI/SCGI interface without similar power would still be useful, but much less so than if it did have power comparable to AOLserver's Tcl API. Does it, or can it? -- Andrew Piskorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.piskorski.com/ -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
