[erlang-questions] Misultin EOL

[Tim Watson]

Hi Joe,

I don't think you actually *need* a single scripting language to rule
them all - nowhere else is this the case. Even in PHP there are
templating and MVC frameworks, because fundamentally any large code
base begins to fray at the seams in the face of 'scriptlet' code
because it is

(a) hard to isolate and therefore
(b) hard to unit test
(c) makes it 'easy' to do the wrong thing and mingle view generation
and business logic, violating separation of concerns

Personally I avoid things like this (PHP, JSP, ASP.NET, etc) like the
plague, opting for templating tools like ErlyDTL or - more often than
not - generating JSON/XML directly from the data model and
streaming/serialising this back to the client.

Other than that, I think a consistent interface between the different
web servers is a bloody awesome step in the right direction. One thing
that simple_bridge does well, in its philosophy at least, is to
delegate to the underlying framework/server as much as possible, for
things like identifying the mime type.

Also I don't think that the implementation adapter should make choices
about, for example, the JSON library used to do the
serialisation/de-serialisation as in
https://github.com/joearms/adapter_pattern/blob/master/mochiweb_adapter.erl#L48.
I want to make my own choices when I'm building a web application,
which include

1. what libraries I use to serialise/de-serialise data
2. what scripting and/or templating libraries I wish to use to
generate content (if this approach is in play)
3. what response codes I want to send to the client

So I fundamentally like where you're going with this, but it's a bit
too high a level of abstraction for a 'generic web server api' and is
making too many choices about these things (above). You need to offer
lower level APIs that bridge the different web servers, as
simple_bridge does. And on that note, if parameterised modules are
going to be official and 'ok' soon, then simple_bridge is actually a
long way ahead already, so maybe it's worth spending some time looking
at it too.

On 18 February 2012 10:39, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Tim Watson <watson.timothy@REDACTED> wrote:
>> On 17 February 2012 02:09, Steve Davis <steven.charles.davis@REDACTED>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Roberto,
>>>
>>> I'm a bit confused by this whole thread...
>>>
>>> I'm agreeing with Jesse that since Misultin is open source, it's not
>>> really in your control to "stop development" if the interest is there
>>> elsewhere to push it on?
>>>
>>> I'm also agreeing with Steve that I've not seen any demonstration that
>>> yaws is somehow "lacking",
>>>
>>> For me, the last interesting benchmark that demonstrated anything
>>> graspably real was "yaws vs apache".
>>>
>>> A really interesting benchmark for today's "web server" would be, if
>>> someone were willing to engage in a non-trivial effort, to make a
>>> comparison of a full-fledged web application with full session
>>> management and routing capabilities. Note that this would truly test
>>> the appropriateness of the server's http APIs as well as the base
>>> response. That kind of benchmark, for me, would seem more appropriate
>>> and useful according to the epoch.
>>
>>
>> I've been suggesting this for some time now. I will make some time (somehow)
>> to participate and I'm sure others will too.
>
> Yes ^ 100
>
> My *minimal* application does this for *every* GET request
>
>   1) Is there a cookie?
>   2) If no cookie redirect to a set-cookie page
>   3) if there is a cookie lookup value in database
>   4) if no value in DB redirect to warning page
>   5) if there is a value check if user is authenticated
>   6) if not authenticated redirect to login page
>   7) if authenticated lookup same basic data about user
>       in DB
>   8) send the result
>
> I suspect that impedance mismatches between the DB and
> web server are the main sources of inefficiency
>
> The *interesting* benchmark is (say) the number of
> page-views in a forum/second or the number of searches/second in a forum.
>
> We need to implement something like PHPBB and benchmark the number of
> page-views/second
> (Actually doing so would involve even more work before a page gets
> sent - is the IP blacklisted? - has the user
> posted more than N requests in the last T seconds -
> is the user a spammer...)
>
> One thing that hinders this is the lack of a common language
> to implement the web-part in. I have made a little language
> EHE for this - which included in my adapter pattern - EHE is
> easy to embed in *any* erlang web server - I have done so
> for misultin, cowboy and mochiweb see
>
>   https://github.com/joearms/adapter_pattern
>
> The database for something like a web forum needs
> investigation:
>
>
> I want a data base with the following characteristics
>
>   - persistent
>   - Key-Value
>   - fast lookups
>   - slow writes
>   - full-text indexing of certain fields of certain key-types
>
> In a forum type application the read-write ratio is heavily
> skewed in favor of reads - ie lots of reads very few writes.
>
> I am making a systems where all keys-values are stored in
> an ets table.
>
> Reads go to the ets table, writes go to the ets table and are trailed
> on disk. I guess I'd also like large values on disk
> small values in the ets table. Oh and I'd also like full-text indexing
> on tuple fields. ie if I say
>
>    store({post,12456},#item{user="joe", text="......"})
>
> Id like to automatically index the text field of the record.
>
> No erlang database I know of fits the bill - I don't want
> an interface to mySQL or whatever since I suspect the impedance
> mismatch between Erlang and the external
> database would be terrible.
>
> Summary:
>
>    In addition to a fast web-server we need
>
>    - a fast persistent DB suitable for web applications
>    - zero impedance mismatch between the DB and the web server
>   - a language for the application (like PHP) (you'll find my
>     EHE at https://github.com/joearms/adapter_pattern)
>   - authentication
>
> All these bits have to fit together with bridges (adapters) so
> we can change the database/server/authentication without
> having to rewrite the entire application.
>
> Do this and *then* benchmark against PHPBB (or something)
>
> Cheers
>
> /Joe
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> /s
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>>
>>
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