From: chad fowler <chadfowler@...>
Date: 2001-05-08T04:33:02+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:14799] Re: Ruby and Web Applications


--- Anders Bengtsson <ndrsbngtssn@yahoo.se> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 May 2001, Guy N. Hurst wrote:
> 
> >
> > MJ Ray wrote:
> > > ... The *right* thing to do is an object-based
> ruby
> > > application server, which could (should?) be an
> order of magnitude
> > > faster than embedded scripting.  Anyone
> interested?  ;-)
> >
> > Of course - many of us are :-)
> > Maybe you can join in on one of the various
> projects,
> > or start your own if yours is a different
> approach.
> >
> > For example, one project is IOWA. There are
> others.
> > I am working on one also, along with Chad Fowler,
> but
> > have nothing for the public yet.
> 
> Interesting! What kind of approach are you using,
> then?
> 
> I've been thinking about something like the session
> beans in Java's J2EE
> environment, which are really nice, at least when it
> comes to concurrency
> and transactions. Maybe IOWA would make a good front
> end to something
> like that.
> So far I've only built a proof-of-concept of an
> object persistence
> mechanism, but who knows...
> 

What we've been thinking about is something very
similar to a Java servlet engine.  We're not looking
to implement an application framework or development
paradigm at first.  We're simply looking to implement
a high  quality application server that models, at a
low level, how the web works (request/response, etc.)
in a scalable and highly available fashion.  Actually,
I had hoped to "port" IOWA to run atop it when it's
finished.

The first piece that I've started on is implementing a
Ruby listener for an already proven, load balancing,
fail-over-enabled apache plugin that comes with the
open source Enhydra application server
(http://www.enhydra.org).  I am a decent way down this
path.  This will provide load balancing and failover
across multiple servers and/or instances of whatever
application server is implemented.  I have temporarily
stalled but plan to pick it back up in early June with
renewed vigor.

It seems that the Ruby community is generally at odds
with itself as to what it's looking for in a web
programming solution.  What I'm hoping to do is to
implement something at a low enough level that it can
provide services for many of the differing ideas on
how a web app should work.

Chad

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