At 05:04 AM 10/7/2005, you wrote:
>Guys, will you take this bickering about Java definitions off-list,
>please? We've got work to do ;-).
>
>Servlets are another potentially useful idea gone bad in the Java
>world. It's a technology, not a concept. It's not our technology, and
>the last time I looked at it it was sucking technology, so let's not
>transplant these words.

Whether the technology sucks or not really isn't at issue.  The general 
problem that a lot of people run into - and one that we found VisualWave 
didn't solve) is this - it's an uphill battle to bring Smalltalk into an 
organization.  Getting it okayed for a web app is simplified if much of the 
existing infrastructure (web developers who know how to create ASP/JSP 
style pages) can be reused.

Whether we think that's a useful way to create web apps is far less 
interesting than whether it allows Smalltalk to get more use.


>To me, the concept is called a service. You have a service in your
>image that can spit out something a browser understands? Call it a
>web-enabled service for my part :-).
>
>Now, to go back to the original question:
>" I want to do what java calls servlet, in other words I want an
>application executing on the server and is displayed in the webbrowser
>and be able to read and write to files."
>
>That is possible with any of the web frameworks in Squeak:
>- Seaside for complex user interaction;
>- SmallWiki for content-management apps;
>- Swiki if you happen to like the architecture;
>- Comanche if you want to serve external files and of course to plug
>all three above together;
>- ...
>
>Seaside seems to have the most clout at the moment. SmallWiki is being
>rewritten to Seaside, so at the end of the day it won't be an
>exclusive-or.
>
>Original poster: if you could give a more specific example of what you
>want to do, we can give more specific advice. You'll also prevent
>James and Blake bitching at each other ;-)
>
>On 10/7/05, Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 14:54:39 -0700, James Robertson <jarober at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Using the VW framework, you can define a servlet endpoint in an html
> > > page in the same way you would for a Java servlet.
> >
> > There are lots of ways to do this, yes. Delphi has at least six ways to do
> > it, I believe.
> >
> > > What's the difference?  The image fires up a new instance instead of
> > > loading (and caching) from disk.  So what?
> >
> > What's the point in distinguishing between "server" and "servlet"? I would
> > consider a server to be a standalone application that has a loose or no
> > connection with a web-server, while a servlet can't exist without one.
> >
> > If that definition offends you, feel free to not use it.
> >
> >

<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>
James Robertson, Product Manager, Cincom Smalltalk
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView