Re: A Conclusion Re: SchemeQL

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk@cs.brown.edu>]

MJ Ray wrote:

>					 I think, long-term, running
> something persistent to handle a subdirectory on the web site, or on
> another port, is the way to go.  If that can be a scheme server sat
> behind apache's forwarding and caching, then I'll be well happy.  I
> know that the paper says that it's as fast as apache, but I think we
> still need apache's feature set for such a large and organic site,
> really.

I agree.  I don't want to position the PLT server as a competitor to
Apache.  We will never be able to compete on feature set, and will
waste a lot of time trying.

What functional languages help us do well is express complex
algorithms more easily and correctly, and provide features that expose
new opportunities.  I think the Web server paper gives excellent
examples of the latter (eg, two Web scripts sharing the same lexical
context -- simple stuff to a Schemer, a big deal in C).  Eventually,
this can become a platform for people to experiment with caching
strategies and so forth.  You could have a front-end Apache server
redirecting requests, and back-end PLT servers doing the real service.
Or even the other way around, if the request routing part if where the
clever stuff lies!

Shriram