[Seaside] Ajax live updates

[Lukas Renggli]

> > Isn't this behaviour also associated with the nature of a web session
> > being processed by the server as a single thread?

A web session in Seaside is not modelled by a single thread/process,
though some similar frameworks in Java/Python try to do exactly that
to overcome the missing continuations.

> > Which means, the server queues subsequent requests until the very first
> > one is finished?

This is actually a security feature to prevent concurrency issues. It
simplifies Web application development a lot as developers don't need
to be aware of concurrent modifications within one session.

> > However it would make sense to have multiple parallel request being
> > processed in background if each one retrieved data out of a session.

Also only retrieving data can be a problem: if you have a single
data-base connection per session you could easily screw up your
connection if you start multiple queries from different threads at the
same time.

> Yes, I'm just not the guy capable of fixing Seaside, hence my call for
> help.  I need to be able to do this, but it's too deep for me.

For script.aculo.us requests it would be sometimes cool if they don't
block. I am not sure how this could be modelled the best, though I
would like to keep the current behavior as a default. Processing
requests concurrently opens many new ways to shoot yourself in the
foot!

Cheers,
Lukas

-- 
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch