2008/04/19
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IRC [08:35] <CIA-48> 03dossy * 10nsfreetds/ (nsfreetds.html nsfreetds.c):
IRC [08:35] <CIA-48> Added parameters for 'clientcharset', 'language', 'packetsize'
IRC [08:35] <CIA-48> and 'tdsversion'. See nsfreetds.html for documentation.
IRC [08:37] <CIA-48> 03dossy * 10nsfreetds/ChangeLog:
IRC [08:37] <CIA-48> Added parameters for 'clientcharset', 'language', 'packetsize' and
IRC [08:37] <CIA-48> 'tdsversion'. See nsfreetds.html for documentation.
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IRC [14:14] <Dossy> justis: welcome back :)
IRC [14:15] <justis> Hi, Dossy!
IRC [14:15] <justis> Thanks for dropping in yesterday to ask if I needed help.
IRC [14:15] <justis> I was too heads-down to look at IRC.
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IRC [14:21] <Dossy> Ah. OK.
IRC [14:21] <Dossy> BTW, who are you? :)
IRC [14:26] <justis> I'm an independent consultant. One of my clients uses a lot of OpenACS, AOLserver, and TCL.
IRC [14:28] <justis> One of my recent projects has security as its #1 priority and I thought that "fewer moving parts" would be a good move in that regard. So, I'm learning just enough AOLserver to not need OpenACS for this project.
IRC [14:29] <Dossy> Cool!
IRC [14:29] <Dossy> Are you subscribed to the AOLserver mailing list, too?
IRC [14:29] <justis> So far, I'm very pleased with the brevity of code required while still giving me very granular control of the HTTP operations themselves.
IRC [14:29] <justis> No, I'm not on the mailing list yet. Perhaps I should be.
IRC [14:30] <Dossy> Maybe. IRC is still not "busy" enough to get 24x7 support here.
IRC [14:30] <justis> I need to expose my brain to more data about this, anyhow.
IRC [14:30] <Dossy> We mostly idle here. Periodically, two of us are around at the same time, and we chat. :)
IRC [14:30] <Dossy> You also know about the AOLserver wiki, yes?
IRC [14:30] <justis> Well, I was coming by for moral support more than direct support.
IRC [14:30] <Dossy> Ah, cool.
IRC [14:30] <justis> Yes, that AOLserver wiki is part of what got me over the issue I was researching at the time.
IRC [14:30] <Dossy> What geographic region are you in? Sorry for all the questions, but I like to informally collect this kind of knowledge about AOLserver users.
IRC [14:31] <justis> Which was: how do I get variables that are represented in a RESTful style URL?
IRC [14:31] <justis> I live in Raleigh, NC.
IRC [14:31] <Dossy> Aha. ns_queryget :)
IRC [14:31] <Dossy> and/or ns_querygetall, depending
IRC [14:32] <justis> Oh, really? ns_queryget? Gotta check that out.
IRC [14:32] <justis> I ended up using ns_urlv
IRC [14:32] <Dossy> ha. yeah, ns_queryget for one value, or ns_querygetall for a Tcl list of values
IRC [14:32] <Dossy> i.e., foo.adp?a=1&b=2&c=3&a=4&a=5
IRC [14:33] <Dossy> [ns_queryget a] should be [list 1]. [ns_querygetall a] should be [list 1 4 5]
IRC [14:33] <Dossy> Parsing ns_urlv "works" too, but ...
IRC [14:33] <justis> Oh, that's not going to do. By "variables in a RESTful" URL, I meant prior to the query string: /album/345/track/3
IRC [14:33] <Dossy> Aha. Yeah, for that, you want to use [ns_conn urlv] - heh.
IRC [14:33] <justis> OK, cool.
IRC [14:34] <Dossy> And probably use ns_register_adp or ns_register_proc for the endpoint URL prefix.
IRC [14:34] <justis> I was contemplating using ns_register_filter and getting it to convert the URL into a more traditional query.
IRC [14:34] <Dossy> Or, yeah - you could use registered filters ... there's several different ways to do it, depending on how you prefer to design.
IRC [14:34] <justis> Yeah, I ended up doing the endpoint URL. Something like /album from the example above.
IRC [14:34] <Dossy> Yup.
IRC [14:34] <Dossy> It's remarkably simple.
IRC [14:35] <justis> I want to explore the filters, but I'm in "get it done" mode, so I went with the low hanging fruit.
IRC [14:35] <Dossy> No "beans," no "web.xml," no "containers," no "scaffolding" or "framework" ... :)
IRC [14:35] <justis> My disappointment was that it made me go through another proc in the middle that was reproducing behavior that was already modeled well at the ns_ level.
IRC [14:35] <justis> ns_register_proc, specifically.
IRC [14:35] <Dossy> Heh.
IRC [14:35] <justis> But "get it done" won out.
IRC [14:36] <Dossy> Sure. You're talking one line of code, heh.
IRC [14:37] <justis> Yeah, I'm starting to think that it could be a very easy way to quickly prototype RESTful applications, which is a philosophy that has also thrown away a lot of the need for all the extra stuff in most frameworks.
IRC [14:39] <justis> The question currently in my head is whether there are any "cloud computing" providers for AOLserver. One of my favorite aspects of ReST is its ability to scale.
IRC [14:42] <justis> Admittedly, AOLserver scales very well for my client. That, with "pound" in front of it makes for a pretty graceful machine.
IRC [14:43] <justis> For my own apps, though, I have no budget for scaling and I like the idea of architecting them for cloud computing from day one.
IRC [14:45] <justis> The apps I want to write, personally, are mostly aimed at social applications that would target users bases with grand scale, like Twitter, Facebook, OpenSocial, etc. Thus, they all run the "risk" of garnering a huge user base in a short period of time.
IRC [14:45] <justis> That "risk", of course, is part of the allure :)
IRC [14:47] <justis> I guess it would be "risk" in the way that PMI speaks of project risk, which can be either positive or negative consequence, and changes the project in a signficant way.
IRC [14:49] <justis> So, where do you live? Is it a gorgeous day where you are, too?
IRC [14:50] <justis> It's in the high 70s here in Raleigh.
IRC [14:53] <justis> I've gotta go AFK for a few minutes. I hope to chat with you again soon. It's very nice work, this AOLserver, and I'm curious to learn more about it. As you pointed out, having ns_register_proc as a single line can be really elegant. It's kinda getting me hooked.
IRC [15:05] <Dossy> It's gorgeous here - Butler, NJ - 77F and not a cloud in the sky.
IRC [15:05] <Dossy> Scaling AOLserver is more a function of how you design your application rather than AOLserver's capability itself.
IRC [15:06] <Dossy> If you know how to scale a web application horizontally (no host-local storage, etc.) in any other platform, AOLserver is no different.
IRC [15:36] <justis> Yeah, I definitely understand the "no host-local storage" part.
IRC [15:36] <justis> Glad it's pretty there, too.
IRC [15:36] <justis> I was googling "aolserver ec2" and found this from the IRC logs: IRC [08:10] <Dossy> So, something I was thinking of building: an Amazon EC2 AMI, using Debian 4.0 and AOLserver -- like my VMware image. I wonder if that would help folks try AOLserver ...
IRC [15:36] <justis> did you ever go anywhere with that?
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IRC [18:21] <Dossy> justis: No, I never got around to creating the AMI. No one expressed any real interest, and I have no real use for it personally, yet.
IRC [18:22] <justis> Dossy: That makes sense. Did it look pretty accomplishable?
IRC [18:22] <Dossy> Oh, certainly.
IRC [18:23] <Dossy> I even have some proof-of-concept Tcl code to get/set data from S3.
IRC [18:24] <justis> That part certainly sounds interesting.
IRC [18:24] <justis> It would take care of that "no local storage" part to make scaling easier.
IRC [18:24] <justis> Then, I could at least post multiple instances of virtual servers with AOLserver on them in order to scale
IRC [18:25] <Dossy> Right, and eliminates the need to stand up your own memcached servers.
IRC [18:25] <justis> Not quite as cost efficient as cloud computing, but at least it's logistically easy
IRC [18:30] <justis> Dossy: Is S3 even remotely close to as performant as memcached? It strikes me as unlikely, unless you're caching S3 data.
IRC [18:37] <Dossy> I imagine network I/O overhead is the killer.
IRC [18:38] <Dossy> But in terms of performance ... assuming you're accessing S3 from an EC2 image over the AMZN local network, I bet it's just as fast as memcached.
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