Oh yes! See, our app is written entirely arround it and the web-part is about 20% of the total (the web-based config GUI). All other is combination of C/Tcl modules. It is well suited for what we're doing because of the speed of C and ease of development in Tcl. We considered writing our own app-server way back in 1999 but then AS got open-sourced. This saved us lots of time and trouble. Since then I'm trying to help with the project to give something in return. I would also love to see this project evolves since we're betting our company on it. I also think (we have proved it) that AS can be a very powerful application server. It would be the pitty to neglect this potential. Sure would be a huge problem for us.
Same here, our system is based on AOLServer platform and Web gui is only top of the iceberg, the core does all stuf like network/device provisioning, various background tasks. It is all different C/Tcl modules and having them developed under one platform, using same C and Tcl languages is a big susccess. Administration of such system is a breeze, very stable and fast.
The only missing part is reentrant expect, for this external expect process should be called. For big complex systems it is natural to extend aolserver from its web-only roots, in many cases it is just extending API, the big modification is driver change, making it more flexible and not HTTP-only will open doors for aolserver to get to application server market.
May be having two different versions is a solution, but keeping it as simple webserver and constantly talking how to make it more popular is useless, apache is there already, installation and configuration is much simpler, documentation is complete. Webserver which is more complicated in everything serving Web pages does not have any chances even among developers, i am not talking about people who wants just to try it before starting development.
What are AOL's direction and plans for AOLServer?
If AOL will say that it wants to keep it as is, just stable webserver, AOL is not interested in extending it, then others who think it should be extended will decide how to proceed. At least it would be fair, i've been hoping that aolserver may be extended for the last 2 years but it never happened, AOL rewrites HTTP driver with every version, squeezing from it another 0.009 miliseconds to serve web pages and making it more and more HTTP specific. AOL web farms are unique, i do not think there will be sites something like it ever, and those sites will not need that kind of performance, but keeping aolserver in this way prevents others to use it more widely and what is more important adding new features.
So, what is the answer?
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