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Responses intermixed...

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 10:28, Mark Roberts wrote:
> I'm new to this list and am not sure if there is much activity present,

Sadly, there's practically no activity on the list, but that's mostly my
fault for not being very active on development.

> none the less I'd like to make a case to support operation of Crystal9
> in a non-mod_perl environment.

> Would be great to see support for operation of Crystal9 such that it can
> be run from a different machine from the web server like is supported by
> interchange (the RedHat ecommerce server).  Interchange supports a
> network or unix socket connection between the web server and machine
> running interchange.  The potential advantages are:
> 
> - Crystal9 could take connections from the web server and not have to
> pay a startup price for each connection as it would be always running
> and ready.  Perhaps a number of threads could be ready and waiting as
> interchange does.

That would definitely help solve the startup cost problem. And it's
basically what I was looking for with mod_perl. Currently, Crystal9
generates most of the pages, and stores them as static pages, but it
always uses SSI to include one script or another. The original intent
was to limit the number of times you have to query the database, which
is also a big hit to page creation time. But then every time I think
about that method, I get a headache from the problems that creates... so
I'll probably end up dynamically generating every page in a future
version. Your idea would really be useful then.

> - Security could be enhanced as Crystal9 could run on seperate machine
> from web server.

While this is true, it also adds the headache of dealing with some type
of daemon, and securing it. Which shouldn't be super-difficult, but does
add a bit more concern... as it's coded right now, the only way to break
Crystal9 is through the web server, but running on a socket or network
port potentially makes it vulnerable directly to everyone... and if not
everyone, then to whoever can access the web server.

On the other hand, this would go a long way toward making crystal9 more
suitable for a clustered environment... multiple web server front-ends,
accessing one or more Crystal9 back-ends, which in turn can access a
database cluster serving the site. Granted, your average shop isn't
going to need this, but why not plan for the grittiest, high traffic
installation? :-)

> - Ability to spread out the work load across more machines.

Yep, see above.

> Some of the software to support this mode of operation can be found in
> interchange such as mod_interchange and the tlink and vlink cgi
> programs.

I will have to investigate this further. If most of the infrastructure
is there, then it should be pretty straightforward to adapt it to
Crystal9. However, I have to warn you that at the pace I'm going, it'll
come in about 50 years. :-( I'm trying to step up and start developing,
but it's hard when it's only me, and there are many distractions around
me. Enough excuses.

If you feel bored, and want to start working on it, I happily accept
patches that people send me. I'm not going to be able to get to work on
it until I finish my todo list, which involves testing my latest mass
changes to the code, reworking configure.pl (it was seriously messed up
in the last couple revisions to AllCommerce), reworking the whole
setpmdir.pl thing (I hate the solution they came up with).... and I
think that's about it.

Thanks for your suggestions!
-- Aaron
psn...@un...

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