[Seaside] Re: static image files

[Jimmie Houchin]

David Shaffer wrote:
> Jimmie Houchin wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> Let me see if I understand correctly here.
>>
>> Squeak's file I/O blocks, so any activity which requires file access
>> impacts the performance.
> 
> Yes.  Of course the real impact depends a lot on application usage
> patterns (is it the same image file being served many times to the same
> user?  a bunch of different users?  a bunch a different image files?). 
> It also depends on how well browser caching is working or if you're
> using a front-end cache (like squid) how well it is working.

Yes, I understand that the application makes a tremendous difference.
Myself, I prefer to let Apache, Lighttpd, etc. server truly static
content. So I guess I was fishing for confirmation that local use of the
filesystem has its costs.

I guess this would also be born in use of Magma for DB.

I guess the more in memory inside the image the better.

>> What about the network I/O? Is it non-blocking?
> 
> Yes, network I/O is non-blocking (the Squeak UNIX VM has a polling-based
> custom asynchronous I/O model).

Bueno.

>> Are there any significant problems when a request requires some
>> time-consuming action before returning? Such as calling other servers
>> web services. Does it negatively impact other requests?
> 
> If the operation is in squeak and is CPU intensive fork it off at a
> lower priority and have the request thread wait on a semaphore for the
> compute intensive process to complete.  Calling web services would take
> advantage of the non-blocking socket I/O calls.

Great

>> Thanks for any wisdom or insight.
> 
> :-) I hope that it turns out to be helpful. :-)

Most definitely. Thanks.

Jimmie