[erlang-questions] Did I do it right?

[Robert Virding]

I would say that that is a very good reason to try rolling your own. When you better understand what is going on inside an OTP gen_server then you can make a better choice of which way to go. Choosing to use a gen_server provides you with a lot of extra functionality and safety (for example calling the gen_server will check that it is there and doesn't die on you). However you do lose some control when receiving messages and there is an extra cost. You need to choose what you really need. 

I am not advocating against using a gen_server, but I don't feel that you should indiscriminately always use one. 

Robert 

----- Original Message -----

> From: "James Rosenblum" <jrosenblum@REDACTED>
> To: "Gleb Peregud" <gleber.p@REDACTED>
> Cc: "erlang-questions" <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Sent: Sunday, 28 October, 2012 4:03:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] Did I do it right?

> Gleb,

> Thanks for taking a look...

> I wanted to understand better what was going on with OTP, and I
> thought that rolling my own OTP- Supervisor-compliant process would
> help. I thought that one day I might need to write my own. I sort of
> forgot that I did that - I will replace it with a gen-server.

> From: Gleb Peregud <gleber.p@REDACTED>
> To: James Rosenblum <jrosenblum@REDACTED>
> Cc: erlang-questions <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2012 3:53 AM
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] Did I do it right?

> Hello James

> Since no one reacted yet, I've skimmed through the code very quickly
> and it looks really good - I wouldn't assume it being written by
> Erlang novice. The only thing I've spotted, which is rarely done in
> production grade Erlang systems is use of non-OTP servers by doing
> manual looping in spawned process (although I can see it does handle
> all sys messages and stuff). Is there any particular reason to not
> use gen_server in that case?

> Cheers,
> Gleb Peregud

> On Thursday, October 25, 2012, James Rosenblum wrote:

> > Kind and Wise List;
> 

> > For selfish and professional reasons, I regularly attempt
> > medium-to-deep dives on interesting technologies (Ruby, Go, etc.),
> > and about 12 months ago I started looking at Erlang. I have become
> > a
> > huge fan of the entire Erlang Ecosystem and have tried to be a good
> > student.
> 

> > Like many, I taught myself by reading the usual books, going to the
> > usual websites, looking at existing projects, following this list
> > and participating in stackoverflow. And, like many I suspect, I
> > wrote a cache ;)
> 

> > What I wrote could solve a problem for my company which builds and
> > deploys an enterprise application which needs to cache
> > domain-objects (assembled from a variety of Oracle or MSSQL tables)
> > and provide them to web clients. We currently use an in-process
> > cache that is part of a fairly typical Java-stack application.
> > Unfortunately it is difficult to cluster, and it doesn't provide us
> > with the level of control and specialization that we would like. A
> > successful cache needs to be available on 2 or 3 nodes for
> > redundancy and to handle load . There are 200 - 400 clients
> > producing about 50 transactions per second bursting to about 200
> > transactions per second for a few minutes at a time (probably 80%
> > reads). Our software is installed in customer's data centers - no
> > public Internet involvement. What I wrote would seem to fulfill
> > these requirements.
> 

> > As a company, based on my enthusiasm, we are considering Erlang,
> > and
> > my cache is going to be looked at as a reference implementation,
> > learning tool and poc.
> 

> > What I don't know is: Did I create a piece of crap example of
> > Erlang
> > that does the entire community a disservice; or, did I do a
> > reasonable job of representing what could, and should, be done with
> > the technology?
> 

> > If anyone is feeling charitable, and wouldn't mind helping develop
> > a
> > good Erlang Citizen, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions
> > on what I have done.
> 

> > It can be found at https://github.com/jr0senblum/JCache
> 

> > If this is an inappropriate request, I apologize and please feel
> > free
> > to ignore this all together.
> 

> > Thanks in advance,
> 

> > Jr0
> 

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