At 09:33 am 6/16/00, Peter William Lount wrote:

 >The http://www.fastcgi.com module for Apache and other web servers is the
 >small custom "cgi" program that Lantz Rowland is talking about writing that
 >would talk with a continiously running Squeak image.

Umm, no that is not what I intended. I was suggesting that an Apache module 
for communicating with Squeak is a good idea and that it should not be 
coupled with either CGI or fastCGI support in Squeak. That way Squeak can 
service Smalltalk messages from "custom" cgi programs written in C++, perl, 
python or whatever and those programs can choose their own CGI services.

[snip]

 >On the other hand it's nice to have Squeak run as the web server so that
 >the web site can be purely object oriented. I do prefer this from a design
 >standpoint.

Sure, and having the Squeak Server able to use the Apache modules would be 
great.

 >I'd like to see the squeak web object application server images be
 >about 1 or 2 megabytes if possible. This would allow running 50 to 100
 >copies on my existing server (with just a little RAM upgrade).

Perhaps this is where I am not being clear in what I am suggesting. What 
you are describing is the cgi application that your clients access with a 
URL from the web. This is the Client program. Your web server usually 
chooses to run multiple copies of that Client program to service the 
incoming request queue. I suggest that currently these "custom" Client 
programs are better done in a simple scripts such as with Perl or Python, 
though I agree could be tiny headless Smalltalk "applications". It is these 
tiny clients that you may have hundreds of as controlled by your Web Server.

What I am suggesting is that those relatively static Client programs talk 
to one (with perhaps a set) of Full Size Smart Programmable Squeak 
Smalltalk Images that are running as Servers or Daemon for those Clients 
programs. It is this image that provides that Applications Services Classes 
and messages you develop using Smalltalk. If you choose to also have the 
cgi targets to be lobotomized Squeak images, or any other language, it 
should be this Full Size Image that contains the model of how to generate 
and refresh those.

Cheers,
Lantz
--
   Lantz Rowland <lantz at aabysgallery.com>  PgpKey: 0x67E5DFA5
   The Geek Under The FloorBoards of AabysGallery
   AabysGallery <http://aabysgallery.com/>
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