On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 07:33:43PM -0400, Andrew Piskorski wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 12:28:42PM -0700, Dave Kuhlman 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.
Part of your point, as I understand it, is that AOLserver provides capabilities that fall between these two extremes and that these capabilities are valuable. That's an important point that potential users of AOLserver (and moderately clueless current users like me) should be made aware of. Perhaps the AOLserver Web site needs a page on "why you might want to use AOLserver" or "AOLserver benefits and advantages". The strengths of this middle ground (the intersection of #1 and #2 above), the availability of the AOLserver (C and Tcl) APIs, etc should certainly go on that page. > > 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. Another important point for some, although perhaps not for me. I come to AOLserver with an HTTP-centric perspective. I need to broaden my horizon. Still, delivering across HTTP and providing or supporting a Web application development platforms is important to me and others. Perhaps this also should be described on the "AOLserver benefits and advantages" page, along with a few short descriptions of examples of these non-HTTP, not-Webby uses. [a bit of my blather about the SCGI interface and its benefits snipped] > > 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? Another important point. The SCGI (and FastCGI, too, I believe) execution model is an "out-of-process" model. The SCGI server listens on a known port and passes requests to the language/framework that fills the request. All communication from the Web server (Apache or, if I get scgi-aol working completely, AOLserver) is across the SCGI interface (through a socket on the local machine, I believe). So, the "out-of-process" SCGI server and the code it fires off do *not* have access to the AOLserver API, which is an important limitation. The AOLserver API is, however, used by scgi-aol/nsscgi.so to provide the information sent across that SCGI interface and to deliver the response that comes back. This is far from being a solution for everyone and for every problem. Still, for some needs, I'm claiming that it works well. Thanks for trying to give my an expanded vision of AOLserver. It helped and succeeded, I think, ... I hope. Dave -- Dave Kuhlman [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman -- 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.
