[erlang-questions] Erlang http servers

[Ulf Wiger]

As one of the first users of the Inets web server, I would like to 
point out that, at the time, making it Apache-compatible made
perfect sense. It was by no means obvious that it was the best
choice to use an Erlang-based web server in a telecom-class
product, and Apache was a strong contender.

Of course, it would have been nice to have been able to put
a lot of effort into the web server already from the start, but it 
was by no means a priority, as we had much bigger fish to 
fry with OTP. ;-)

The Inets HTTP server did it's job extremely well given our 
requirements. I cannot recall any issues - which is not to say 
that there weren't any, but that they were not serious enough 
to linger in my mind all this time.

The main challenge for us on the HTTP front was to create a 
framework that allowed us to design and maintain over 100
different web pages, with dynamic content, access control and
live SNMP hooks. *That* would have been something to contribute
to the Open Source community. After a wholesale rewrite in 
(I think) 1999, it was actually pretty nice, esp. compared to what
was needed and expected at the time.

BR,
Ulf W

On 3 Oct 2012, at 22:00, Ingela Andin wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> I feel compelled to contribute on the topic of the hidden inets
> application. Once a upon a time someone in Ericsson wrote an http
> server that was very much inspired by Apache, which probably seemed
> sensible at the time but it does not feel like the erlang way of doing
> things. It was almost not document but used extensively by
> Ericsson projects, hence very hard to get rid of. ...

Ulf Wiger, Co-founder & Developer Advocate, Feuerlabs Inc.
http://feuerlabs.com