> I was
> told by the project manager that Apache, Java, and Tomcat were "showing
> signs of age."
-- Taking this statement at face value, and taking it to its logical end
(that you'll have to migrate your application), I'm extremely doubtful
that Apache, Java, and Tomcat are so near their ends of life that you
must redo your app in less than 8 weeks time or risk technological
obsolescence. Far, far from it. "Showing signs of age" is just saying
their old (both Apache and Tomcat had support releases in April), not
that they don't work or fit your precise needs. In any event, if the
timeline is real, then something's not right with the reason for
changing everything over to "something else" or the person pushing this
or.... It's a little mind-boggling.
But, to make this a little more constructive, and assuming the 8 week
deadline is real, I might consider something like MarkLogic given what
you've outlined thus far [1]. That might allow you to preserve your
XQuery/XSLT (providing that you have some since you are using eXist) and
it gets you a replacement for Solr. Being an XML database and
application server, it is designed for XML documents. Unfortunately, it
is closed-source, but the company offers a "free" license option that
might work for you.
If you are investigating something with PHP, Python, or Ruby, I would
look at the Zorba XQuery processor [2], which has bindings for those
three languages (and a few more) and, being a specific language for
manipulating XML documents, should be more conducive to what you need to
do with your files. It's pure bonus if you can re-use your XQuery.
There also appears to be some support for XSLT 1.0 [3]. I've not done
anything with Zorba but install it on a dare.
Cordially,
Kevin
[1] http://community.marklogic.com/
[2] http://www.zorba-xquery.com/html/index
[3] http://www.zorba-xquery.com/html/modules/zorba/programming/xslt
On 05/08/2012 10:17 AM, Ethan Gruber wrote:
Thanks. I have been working on a system that allows editing of RDF in web
forms, creating linked data connections in the background, publishing to
eXist and Solr for dissemination, and will eventually integrate operation
with an RDF triplestore/SPARQL, all with Tomcat apps. I'm not sure it is
possible to create, manage, and deliver our content with node.js, but I was
told by the project manager that Apache, Java, and Tomcat were "showing
signs of age." I'm not so sure about this considering the prevalence of
Tomcat apps both in libraries and industry. I happen to be very fond of
Solr, and it seems very risky to start over in node.js, especially since I
can't be certain the end product will succeed. I prefer to err on the side
of stability.
If anyone has other thoughts about the future of Tomcat applications in the
library, or more broadly cultural heritage informatics, feel free to jump
in. Our data is exclusively XML, so LAMP/Rails aren't really options.
Ethan
On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Nate Vack<[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 10:17 PM, Ethan Gruber<[email protected]> wrote:
It was recently suggested to me that a project I am working on may adopt
node.js for its architecture (well, be completely re-written for
node.js).
I don't know anything about node.js, and have only heard of it in some
passing discussions on the list. I'd like to know if anyone on code4lib
has experience developing in this platform, and what their thoughts are
on
it, positive or negative.
I've only played a little bit, but my take is: you'll have more parts
to build than with other systems. If you need persistent connections,
it's gonna be neat; if you don't, it's probably not worth the bother.
The Peepcode screencasts on Node:
https://peepcode.com/screencasts/node
are probably worth your time and money.
-n
