On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 11:23, Kevin Weller <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey BDRG-ers! > > I have a request by a potential client for an unusual web application > architecture, and wanted to see if anyone else out there has any ideas or > knows of any Rails patches or non-Rails MVC webapp frameworks that might fit > the bill. > > Basically, what they want to do is run the entire application within the > Postgres database engine...data, business logic, page rendering, everything. > What that suggests to me on first blush is either lots of PL/Ruby (and a > newly invented internal logical architecture and framework to structure it), > or patching Rails to pull all its view elements from the database like some > Content Management System on steroids. > > Of course, I will probably be pushing back on this architectural requirement > for phase 1, just so we can get something working quickly and with minimal > expense. So far, security is the only reason given for the database-centric > architecture, but we've secured some pretty sensitive systems using more > traditional web application architectures before. Also, this architecture > would affect our ability to cluster the application across arrays of cheap > servers too...we'd be improvising so much that's a given in Rails. I'm not > so sure that the benefit would be worth the time and expense over a properly > tiered standard webapp. > > Anybody else have any thoughts or references? >
people are doing this now with couchdb - only it's html + js. check out the futon app. this major issue, ironically, with this arch is that it *requires* the database to be on the internet! how that provides security i'm unsure of.... another massive drawback is that dbs simply aren't built to handle to handle large numbers of concurrent requests - at least not be today's web standards. pl/ruby's maintainer died a while back. i've used it extensively in the past and wouldn't want to write a web framework using it - especially since it's unlikely to be maintained moving forward. that being said you may want to pick dan fitzpatrick's head - he's the deepest in to the pg/ruby rabbit hole of anyone i know. i bcc'd him on this message (not sure how the emails end up on the interwebs). cheers. -- -a -- be kind whenever possible... it is always possible - h.h. the 14th dalai lama _______________________________________________ Bdrg-members mailing list [email protected] http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/bdrg-members
