[erlang-questions] IPC bus for Erlang?

[Richard Andrews]

> The different solutions I have found so far:
>     * use Mochiweb/Erlycomet on the Erlang side, and dojo/cometd 
>       (aka "Ajax server side push").
>     * D-Bus:
>     * Leverage Erlang built-in communications system and make the 
>       WebKit a C erlang port itself.
> 
> as the two other options.
> I have ruled out the first idea (Erlycomet), because of the poor 
> performance I got for the initial  tests ; this is really something
> for the web, not the desktop.  D-Bus seems alright, but is perhaps
> overkill, and lacks support…  So, I am seriously considering the
> third option, for its simplicity.

I have recently been involved in a project where the UI was provided by YAWS utilising prototype.js for an Ajax based system. It works well on LAN or across slow links but was a lot of work. XmlHttpRequest can greatly reduce the amount of data required to dynamically render a page. Browser support with javascript becomes an issue. We had to choose to support just one browser to make this workable.

You probably don't want the UI program to be a port as this implies that the erlang node is starting the UI program. If you were going to go in this direction then a standard SSL connection from UI to server is more appropriate IMO. You can still exchange erlang terms (eg. use erl_interface and erlang:term_to_binary) as the messages in the TCP stream if that is a good way to move the data.

--
  Rich


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