Swiki.net vs. Comanche ?

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Wed Nov 1 00:37:15 UTC 2000


> Thanks for the links and providing the information.
>
> I read your PDF and enjoyed the your description of the technologies you
> used.

Thanks!

> Permission system: Does this provide delegated access to objects, pages,
> directories?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but probably yes.  The authentication
mechanism allows easy definition of "net actions."  Each net action is
assigned a security level.  It's up to the object (or it's presenter) to
determine semantic meaning of that security level.  In addition, any object
can have an authorization set attached to it that defines what account have
access level for a given object (thus defining the set of net actions a
given user has access to).

> Sessions
> Virtual Hosting
> Squeak Server Pages
> Remote Server Management
> XML Database
>
> All of these would be great additions to Squeak and/or Squeak Web
> Servers. Are any of these already publicly available?

- Squeak server pages is ... see http://ssp-squeak.swiki.net
- Sessions I believe is already part of comanche (see
http://comanche.swiki.net), but we may have added some more capabilities in
that area

The other stuff should come over time and Je77 or Bolot may have a variant
on some of these in their Comanche and Swiki work.

The next thing I'm working toward is a good transaction service
implementation.  I've got a Transactional Compiler and the start of a robust
framework (that will support TIP).  I'm planning on writing a paper for this
one to illustrate clearly how to use it...I see it as a critical part of any
application server.

> I find the database of tremendous interest. It would seem that it
> would/could be of value to any Squeaker. There are many desktop apps
> which could benefit from a native XML/object database.

There are several solutions available already (I just found it more fun to
build my own)...there's Minnestore, a MySql interface, and probably others.
I'm trying to get to a scalable solution that will have multiple Squeak
images able to access multiple OODBs using a coordinating Squeak image, with
object references among them, and garbage collection.  The ultimate goal
here is to get a cluster of Squeak app servers working together behind a
load balancer with each node capable of maintining it's own local in-memory
object cache.  I have the basics done...GC, mapping, caching, object
refs...but no multi-image stuff yet, and Swiki.net/NetUnify is not powered
by it yet.  Again, the transaction stuff is critical here.

> I believe Squeak Web Systems need all of the above and will eventual get
> them. However, it would be tremendous if the community was blessed with
> a current implementation or project to be able to run with.

I agree...I've had fun working with Squeak as a server and it's an area in
which I think it has great potential.

> Thanks again for sharing this information. I look forward to seeing what
> becomes available in the near future.

Me too.  ;)

- Stephen





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