[erlang-questions] Erlang Web Servers challenge

[Joe Armstrong]

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 2:18 PM, Ivan Uemlianin <ivan@REDACTED> wrote:
> Most of the web server benchmarks I've come across on the web suffer from
> the same flaw: a partisan of server X tests a highly tuned and optimised
> install of their favourite server against default installs of competitor
> servers.  These kinds of benchmarks are really not worth anything.
>
> I think it's a good idea to set a challenge, and invite server developers to
> show how their own project can meet the challenge.
>
> The first step is to devise a challenge, and this is not a trivial step.
>  This step is actually listing the essential functional requirements of a
> web server.  The ability to serve a static file promptly from disk is one
> requirement, but these days I shouldn't think it's the only or even the main
> one.

I know that sounds fine, but it's the non-functional requirements that
always seem
to make or break a project.

   How good is the documentation?
   How mature is the product?
   How easy is it to maintain?
   Can I understand how the thing works?
   Is it covered by the blue-river-snowy public license?
   ...

The answers to these questions are just not quantifiable.

Not being covered by the blue-river-snowy license and having no
documentation would be a very good reason not to use a web server
even if it could serve pages faster than a shark can bite off your leg.


/Joe

>
> I think it might be interesting to agree on a small set of requirements and
> then devise a challenge which could test those requirements.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Ivan
>
>
> On 06/07/2011 12:59, Zabrane Mickael wrote:
>>>>
>>> Why is nginx outside of the challenge scope?
>>
>> Nginx or anything else are out of scope[1] at this time.
>> This will not prevent you to write a simple cache in (pure) Erlang for
>> the challenge.
>>
>>> If you want "to compare Erlang Web servers with other competitors (not
>>> written in Erlang)", surely nginx is one of the main competitors?
>>
>> Yes, but Nginx is written in C.
>>
>> [1] I'm planning to ask the authors of the other tools (like Cherokee,
>> Apache2, Lighttpd + Nginx, Varnish, ...)
>> and let them know about the challenge (with the same rules of course).
>
>
> --
> ============================================================
> Ivan A. Uemlianin
> Speech Technology Research and Development
>
>                    ivan@REDACTED
>                     www.llaisdy.com
>                         llaisdy.wordpress.com
>                     www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin
>
>    "Froh, froh! Wie seine Sonnen, seine Sonnen fliegen"
>                     (Schiller, Beethoven)
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