<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Hi Andy,</div><div><br></div><div>Welcome to Smalltalk and Seaside. Comments below...</div><div><br></div><div>On Apr 7, 2009, at 8:48 PM, Andy Burnett wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">We currently develop web applications using IBM's Domino server. I want to move us over to Smalltalk and Seaside, but I am having some problems understanding which bits we need to assemble in order to make the application stack (the problem with using Domino is that everything is included in one box, so that tends to insulate developers from needing other tools, and hence learning about them). I would really appreciate it if someone could explain the 'mainstream' way of achieving our basic requirements. Although we like Squeak, we are equally happy to go with VW and/or Gemstone if they are better/more reliable/easier ways to get what we need (and I realise that those criteria may well be in the eye of the beholder).</blockquote><div><br></div><div>As to GemStone (disclaimer: I work for the vendor), I think you would find it more reliable and scalable than Squeak and the database is built-in! VisualWorks is also very solid and has a rich library of add-ons and an exceptionally strong tool set. Notwithstanding that, there are systems in production with Squeak, including DabbleDB, so it is a realistic option as well.</div><br><blockquote type="cite">The key facilities we need are:<br><ol><li>SSL connections (I now understand that this is handled by Apache)</li></ol></blockquote>Yes, just use Apache.<br><blockquote type="cite"><ol start="2"><li>User registration and authentication. LDAP would seem to be a good approach - particularly for single sign-on - but does Seaside talk with LDAP (it would be useful to get autheticated usernames in the apps)</li></ol></blockquote>I believe that Apache should be able to hand this as well, and then just pass on the authenticated username to Seaside. <br><blockquote type="cite"><ol start="3"> <li>SMTP (in and out). We would like to be able to generate emails and receive them into the applications - where appropriate</li></ol></blockquote>GemStone does not have a built-in library for SMTP, but I believe that there are people who are doing this. It is essentially reading and writing on a socket so quite straightforward. <br><blockquote type="cite"><ol start="4"><li>Some sort of database. We don't do very large scale data crunching, but we do need to be able to reliably store and retrieve subsets of objects.</li></ol></blockquote>Of course, with GemStone you get the database built-in; no O/R mapping, no external database to manage. If your data is less than 4 GB then you can use the no-cost license of GemStone.<br><blockquote type="cite"><ol start="4"> </ol>Just to be clear, I don't want to burden anyone by asking for detailed descriptions, I just want to know - in broad terms - what we would need in order to replace the domino back end and allow us to develop apps in Smalltalk.</blockquote><div><br></div>Feel free to ask more questions. You can read more about GemStone and Seaside at <a href="http://programminggems.wordpress.com/">http://programminggems.wordpress.com/</a> and <a href="http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/">http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/</a>.</div><div><br></div><div>James Foster</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite">Thanks<br>Andy</blockquote></div></body></html>