Jim,

thanks for the info.
Keeping it all in utf-8 makes sense as you say ... so long as you don't need to access binary files directly with another app. If all send/receive requests go through the sob it works fine ... I have one service using it that way at the moment. Debating about whether to switch it to using nproxy ... there's some sense in making it the gateway for all requests for those files ... there are other systems that use similar models e.g. email de-duping software i.e. the black box service ... who knows how YouTube or AWS actually store the data ... could be own propriety format for all I can know ... all I see is what they present to me when I request an item.

Damien

On 28/10/2007, at 5:35 AM, Jim Davidson wrote:

Howdy,

I wrote the core SOB code years ago -- at the time I think our goals included:

-- Security:  Server connects out to known clients.
-- Performance: State-full connections, minimal protocol overhead, lots of caching, no encoding overhead
-- Simple: String keys, string data, integration with net cache flush
-- Insight:  Lot's of traffic counters collected
-- Tcl aware:  Expects to store/send UTF-8 strings only
-- Some special case stuff, e.g., the comment board code.

In general, SOB met these goals at the expense of:

-- Config complexity: Maintaining topology is rationale but tedious compared to client-server HTTP connections through routers
-- Binary:  Just strings
-- File system scale: SOB relies on rationale topology and/or key management to avoid file system scale problems (i.e., too many files in a directory). The point on UTF-8 deserves a bit more explanation. In general, all the parts of the "dci" module assumed everything is in UTF-8, always. In a sense, it's best to imagine SOB (and NV, AV, etc.) as really just a way to serialize Tcl data to/from some stable something -- if it's not in memory, it's designed to be read directly into memory with no encoding / translation / etc. In other words, the lack of encoding and binary code support was by design, not an oversight, which provided some benefits but -- as in the case of trying to use SOB for thumbnails -- some downside.

-Jim




On Oct 25, 2007, at 9:12 AM, Michael Andrews wrote:

In general, I find the SOB model works well. The caching on the server and the client provide unmatched performance. The NCF provides a mechanism to flush the cache on updates. The Devil is always in the details. How you set up multiple SOB servers and then get the publishes to multiple SOB servers can certainly create scaling and topology management issues.

Most sites to do not have the demands that AOL has - and a simple SOB solution would be nice addition to any content distribution system. However there are advantages to stateless systems. :-) (How's that for diplomatic)

M

On Oct 25, 2007, at 10:19 AM, Dossy Shiobara wrote:

On 2007.10.25, Jay Rohr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In general, I would not recommend using sob. It was developed for very specific requirements at AOL and it does not scale well under load -
volume or frequency.  We are in the process of replacing it with
something else.

Okay, this is just plain misinformation. SOB works very well for what
it was intended for, a low-write, high-read, distributed service for
small objects (thus, the name "SOB").

Any scaling issues AOL is having has to do with how it has since been
misused and/or operationalized.

-- Dossy

--
Dossy Shiobara              | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://dossy.org/
Panoptic Computer Network   | http://panoptic.com/
  "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
    folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)


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