[Seaside] My Introduction to Seaside

[Avi Bryant]

On Nov 12, 2003, at 9:47 PM, Ken Treis wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm Ken Treis, and I was one of the original developers of Swazoo (and  
> of WikiWorks before that, together with Travis Griggs). So I've been  
> doing Smalltalk web stuff for a while. But I became somewhat  
> disillusioned of it, and I haven't done any new Smalltalk web  
> development for quite a while.

Hi Ken,

Welcome to the list.  Travis warned me that you were interested in  
Seaside; I'm glad you showed up.  As for your questions:

> * What's the best way to tie into a database? I'm not too keen on
>   object-relational mappers; I'd almost rather have something more like
>   a PERL prepare/execute.

That's a timely question, given what I just wrote in my blog  
(http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/avi/blogView? 
showComments=true&entry=3246121322).  I mention the Roe library for  
relational data access.  The problem with it is that so far there's  
neither any documentation nor an official release - but you can grab  
the code, with illustrative unit tests, from http://beta4.com/mc/db .   
(That's a Monticello repository, btw, see  
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1287).  So far it only works with  
Postgres - I don't know what your needs are there.

I'll also point out GOODS (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3492) in  
case an object database would do the trick.

> * How are people deploying Seaside? Is it generally being launched with
>   Comanche handling everything, or is it somehow made subservient to
>   Apache? Could mod_proxy be used for this?

Yeah, Apache + mod_proxy seems to be the most common.  In the long run  
we intend to build a custom apache module that is able to multiplex  
requests to multiple images, potentially on multiple machines.

> * Is this stable enough to be used 24x7? After a while, Swazoo (at  
> least
>   on VisualWorks) would clog up with unreleased socket handles and have
>   to be restarted.

I've had Seaside images running for months at a time without incident.   
I'm sure others can weigh in here with their (hopefully good?)  
experiences as well.  The default settings do lead to a fair bit of  
cached session data (I've seen 40 or 50MB images), but I don't think  
there are any leaks.

> * Why did they name this framework after an eggplant (aubergine)?

It's a simultaneous play on Enterprise Javabeans and Apple's Enterprise  
Objects.  It's also, accidentally, by way of kinship with CLEE (Common  
Lisp Enterprise Eggplants).

Cheers,
Avi