apache and yaws

[bryan rasmussen]

I agree that making it all in erlang would be preferable. That said
what other things are big in the apache space?

For me their xml tools are quite useful, especially Cocoon, Cocoon is
a hell of a good xml based framework.

http://cocoon.apache.org/

The main thing that makes cocoon powerful is pipelines.
(reasonable online powerpoint slide http://www.pankaj-k.net/uc2/sld008.htm)

Basically this is another of one those 'java is nondynamic so we will
use an xml based dsl' approaches, one writes up a pipeline definition
in an xml document that is used to match xml inputs to
transformations, validations etc. and define output serialization  -
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/23/cocoon-magazine.html

actually it seems to me that erlang would blow cocoon out of the water on this.





On 1/25/06, Joe Armstrong (AL/EAB) <joe.armstrong@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> Absolutely, though I see no reason for the "must" in our statement
> "the must be things it (Apache) does better than yaws"
>
> Now Apache does things that yaws does not do at all - but
> when you can get Apache and yaws to do the same thing (like serving up
> dynamic content) yaws seems to outperform Apache.
>
> I guess we could ask - what features are missing from yaws that have
> proved to be
> useful in Apache - and then set about and implement them.
>
> Apart form that I haven't quite understood why a server must be a server
> for ONE
> thing. Why do we have FTP servers, HTTP servers, email server, etc.
>
> Why not a universal server, with an FTP plugin, and HTTP plugin, etc.
> (( I built one of these a while back :-)) - it was just an empty server
> that did nothing - the only thing you could do with it was to sent it
> code, and then it became whatever the code you sent it told it to do.
>
> So you could send it code meaning "become an FTP server" and it then was
> an FTP server ...
>
> As regards Apache, I'd like to broaden the scope.
>
>
> Here's the plan.
>
> Replace Apache + MySQL  + PHP    with
>        Yaws   + Mnesia + Erlang
>
> Why?
>
>        Yaws   outperforms Apache
>        Mnesia outperforms MySQL
>        Erlang outperforms PHP
>
> << I could add lots of footnotes here, since these statements need some
> qualifying, ie mnesia is better than SQL for real-time lookups, yaws
> better than apache
> under overload conditions etc. Erlang seems to outperform PHP for
> everything :-) >>
>
> Also, and more importantly, *the bits fit together properly* - ie there
> is no semantic gap between Yaws/mnesia/PHP.
>
> To make an Apache, MySQL, PHP application you have to learn three,
> (yes you heard me right, three) different languages and sets of
> configuration files.
>
> This is *painful* there are even entire BOOKs devoted to setting up
> Apache, MySQL and PHP.
>
> What should be a *trivial* operation of making a web sever work
> together with a database and a scripting language becomes an
> nightmare exercise of fitting different versions of things together.
>
> I tried this once - it was terrible. You have to get exactly the right
> versions of everything and mess around editing things for ages, until it
> finally
> works - no wonder these things come pre-installed or as add-on packages
> in every
> half decent OS release - doing it yourself is a bummer.
>
> Now the Yaws-mnesia-Erlang install is a *lot* easier.
>
> Make Erlang work. Take the yaws tarball, unpack, run.
>
> Making it into a system daemon is a bit more tricky - 20 mins or so.
>
> Now the nice thing about the yaws/mnesia/Erlang setup is the conceptual
> framework - THE BITS FIT TOGETHER - I cannot overstress this point
> (it's called conceptual integrity).
>
> What we currently don't have is an "enterprise yaws" (ie one that will
> let multiple
> users use the same yaws in a safe manner so that they can't crash each
> other's applications)
> nor do we have a decent template language, nor do we have Ajax things
> etc.
>
> All of these are being worked on, and prototype solutions for safe
> Erlang code within Erlang
> and for various template languages are "in progress".
>
> Hopefully these will be in releasable shape fairly soon.
>
> Right now I'm finalising some wiki and template modules to add to yaws
> and trying to move the entire Erlang documentation system into a
> wiki + yaws + blog + forums engine.
>
> Cheers
>
> /Joe
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > [mailto:owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED] On Behalf Of bryan
> > rasmussen
> > Sent: den 25 januari 2006 13:46
> > To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > Subject: apache and yaws
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > A lot of people have referenced the apache vs. yaws
> > discussion over the years, what I'm wondering about is Apache
> > and Yaws. Has anyone thought of any particular integration
> > scenarios between these two. I have to admit I haven't
> > either, but I would think that despite the scalability of
> > yaws that Apache's list of components are impressive, there
> > must be things it does better than Yaws.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Bryan Rasmussen
> >
>