From: Gabriel Emerson <gemerson@...>
Date: 2002-08-27T06:20:25+09:00
Subject: RE: Ruby Based App Server

 JamesBritt wrote:


> What is it that you like about EJBs that you would want to see done with
> Ruby?
> My experience with EJBs as a data abstraction layer soured me on the whole
> thing.  I found them to be bloated, inefficient, and buggy (well, the
> iPlanet implementation at least).

I was of the same opinion, really, until I found that I created most of the 
same bloat, on the fly, without any real design, because it was needed.  
Better to sit down and plan it, and best, to share it, so we don't all 
write the same thing twice.  Keeping it small and simple, of course, is 
still desirable.  I like a lot of the stuff happening at 
jakarta.apache.org, though I am not a fan of Java.  Perhaps some of that 
would be a useful place to start.

It wouldn't hurt to better define what is meant by "Application Server".  To 
me, good things to have would include:

-- A persistent/pooled connection server for Ruby-DBI, as well as persistent 
connections at the mod_ruby level.
-- An object server that brings objects into being from dups or from in-core 
serialization (when designing web sites in ruby, the require statements can 
take forever, and this is magnified with a good sized framework)
-- Lightweight object persistence for Ruby-DBI
-- XML-defined controller-level abstraction for interface objects/use case 
objects
-- A flexible templating system (not sure that ERb isn't fine already)

Keys to this: they have to be able to work adequately as separate 
components, and very well together.  They should all use only freely 
available components.  Last of all, and this is just something that bothers 
me: they shouldn't just be copies of the way Language X does something, 
with the assumption that you have used Language X and would rather read the 
documentation to original Language X implementation.

--Gabriel