[ANN] AIDA/Web app server 5.4 beta released on Squeak

Hi Lukas,

Lukas Renggli wrote:

>> - Back button supported (really needed?)
>
> As long as IE has a back button, billions of people will press on that
> button every day. No matter if they have been told not to do so ;-)

That "really needed?" is a question about Seaside way of back button
support, which is more like "Undo", at least as we can see from a
counter example.

What I claim is that the users need back button just to go back in an
information space where they come from. And that they always come back
to that information in a consistent state.

For instance, if I confirmed and order and then go back to a previous
page, this page need to show me that order is already confirmed (that's
what Aida do) and not to "undo" my order (as Seaside obviously promote
with counter example?)

>> - Not much OO, more procedural programming
>
> That must be a misunderstanding, this is completely wrong. Seaside was
> always a framework written from top to bottom with objects. It
> encourages users to use objects and provides a clean separation
> between model and view.

I admit that I forgot what I meant few years ago, but that statement in
a bit different form:

- Not much web, more procedural programming

still stand. It is a critique on Continuations and its tree-like
programing, which is just not natural for the web, because web is graph
like (a directed graph of web pages)

>> - Url's not RESTlike
>
> The question about REST is more a religion than a technical question.
> Fact is,  Seaside supports RESTful URLs with little additional effort
> from the developer.

More about that later in answer to Gianni.

> More important is that Seaside provides a high abstraction over HTTP.
> Developers don't have to think about request, response, urls, unique
> parameter and field names, etc. Seaside does all that for you and let
> you concentrate on what you really need, your application.

That kind of abstraction is provided with Aida too. You also don't need
to deal with requests, sessions, urls, fields etc. You just program web
representations of your domain objects and that all.

>> - Crosslinking
>> - pages difficult
>
> I don't exactly understand what this means, but I think it is wrong (see
> above).

Thats about richness of navigation support. In Aida you can just provide
a reference to some domain object and you got a web link to it, while in
Seaside you can point just forth and back to components in continuation
stack and to other registered components, right? In Aida you just need
to register a root object of your domain model, links to all other
domain objects are automatic.

Best regars
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Cédrick, just an answer to the last part for now:

Cédrick Béler wrote:

> yes but there are always people who ask for REST...  so there is an
> alternative now (in squeak) and I'm sure it can bring people to seaside
> either once you're familiar with smalltalk syntax... and maybe for web
> site not highly dynamic, AIDA seems to me a good option...
> to sum up my feelings:
> complex web application -> seaside
> dynamic site -> AIDA

Aida is definitively able to deal with complex app development as good
as Seaside if not even better. That's not only my observation anymore,
that's a feeling and also an experience of others too, who already tried
both.

What I usually say is that Seaside is good for 1% of web app when Aida
is good for 99% of the rest of that app, while with a little more effort
it can make that 1% too. And I'm talking here about complex web apps!

Seaside is designed from start for that 1% but web reality is that you
need to support other 99% well too and here it seems that Seaside is not
able to follow, probably because of design which lies on continuations
too much.

Best regards
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

El 6/14/07 1:07 PM, "Janko Mivšek" <[hidden email]> escribió:

> Ah, months? Week or two! They know a problem now, they have a better
> tool, they just need to get used Aida a bit and then it will be piece of
> cake for them, be sure.
>
> Janko
The problem is I don't have any power on them.
Only persuasion.
I put my hands on Aida for figure how have live picts.
Thinking in Form and serve  the Form-asWebImage, like we do in HV2.
Only I need some example of you use of Pixmap.
On the crash point, you have all nil as in attached.
Tomorrow I plan to stay on IRC 12 to 15 GMT roughly, so if you could meet on
chat, I appreciate .

Edgar

If I were to ask you to back up your claim on Seaside's 1% or its uselessness which you seem to imply, what evidence would you present to such effect? I've built a somewhat complex and extensible application here with very little effort and I wouldn't classify Dabble DB as being simple either. As matter of fact I can think of a few applications built in Seaside whereas I can't recall speaking with anyone who'd used Aida at all. Just a thought...

:)

-Boris

--
+1.604.689.0322
DeepCove Labs Ltd.
4th floor 595 Howe Street
Vancouver, Canada V6C 2T5
http://tinyurl.com/r7uw4

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> Seaside is designed from start for that 1% but web reality is that you
> need to support other 99% well too and here it seems that Seaside is not
> able to follow, probably because of design which lies on continuations
> too much.

Janko, please stop talking about things you do not have the faintest idea about.

--
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch

Lukas Renggli wrote:
>> Seaside is designed from start for that 1% but web reality is that you
>> need to support other 99% well too and here it seems that Seaside is not
>> able to follow, probably because of design which lies on continuations
>> too much.
>
> Janko, please stop talking about things you do not have the faintest
> idea about.
>

Lukas, I was asked and I provided an answer. Which is my opinion based
on observation, checking some examples and experiences from others.

And you obviously don't have a faintest idea about Aida, right?

Janko


--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

On 6/14/07, Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Lukas, I was asked and I provided an answer. Which is my opinion based
> on observation, checking some examples and experiences from others.
>
> And you obviously don't have a faintest idea about Aida, right?

Folks, let's kill this thread.

I certainly know very little about Aida, and wouldn't make and haven't
made any claims about it or what it's appropriate for.  That's for you
to say.

By the same token, I do think it's reasonable for Lukas to suggest
that you leave an analysis of Seaside to those who are familiar with
it.

The great thing is that now that both are available for Squeak, there
will no doubt eventually be people who have deep experience with both
and can make reasonable comparisons, to the benefit of us all.

For now, I think this discussion is going to generate a lot of heat
and not much light.

Avi

Avi for President!

-Boris

--
+1.604.689.0322
DeepCove Labs Ltd.
4th floor 595 Howe Street
Vancouver, Canada V6C 2T5
http://tinyurl.com/r7uw4

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Avi,

Avi Bryant wrote:

> The great thing is that now that both are available for Squeak, there
> will no doubt eventually be people who have deep experience with both
> and can make reasonable comparisons, to the benefit of us all.

Agree completely. This thread is about Aida on Squeak so if someone
wants opinions and comparisons or share experiences on one or another,
let he subscribe to one or other mailing list and share them there.

Janko


> For now, I think this discussion is going to generate a lot of heat
> and not much light.
>
> Avi


--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Hi Boris,

Boris Popov wrote:
> If I were to ask you to back up your claim on Seaside's 1% or its uselessness
 > which you seem to imply, what evidence would you present to such
> effect? I've built a somewhat complex and extensible application here with very
 > little effort and I wouldn't classify Dabble DB as being simple
 > either. As matter of fact I can think of a few applications built in
Seaside
> whereas I can't recall speaking with anyone who'd used Aida at all.
> Just a thought...

I didn't imply its uselessness with that 1% , just my feeling (I admit
that pretty plastically) about the difference in approach. But let we
stop those comparisons or better said, leave them to those who will have
  an experience with both, as Avi suggested.

Best regards
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

I agree with Avi,

        there is no light on that path. Let's use our operative time for
useful discussions: the ones that lead us to construct or maintain good
things. Sometimes there are direct creation based on a consensed use of time
and resources and sometimes there are a need to use tecnically destructive
criticism (of things and/or ideas and/or attitude and never persons) to make
room to make feasible to construct new better things for the good of us all.

        I don't see previous posts of this discussion matches any of those
cases. Free discussion of differences lead to waste of resources. Ego fights
are childhood and seems to me that here people use it's one kilogram nervous
system to go far away from childhood.

        What I do see is that this case is about the born of an option for
us all in web development with smalltalk. Squeak in particular, so today is
a great day.

        In Michael Scott's words: let's celebrate diversity :)

        Cheers,

Sebastian Sastre

On 6/14/07 3:09 PM, "Boris Popov" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Avi for President!
>
> -Boris

Boris, Boris, Boris...

You're Canadian. Avi's Canadian. I'm Canadian.
Avi for "Prime Minister".

Chris

I totally disagree; I think we should fight it out!!

:) Ron

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:53:22 -0700, Ron Teitelbaum <[hidden email]>  
wrote:

> I totally disagree; I think we should fight it out!!
>
> :) Ron

Yeah! And the less information we have about what we're fighting over the  
better!


        ===Blake===

(I'm guessing Ron is also an American. :-)

2007/6/14, Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]>: That's right and can not be stressed enough:
Seaside works not the way the web works. It introduces ugly hacks
(continuations) that are only needed in very few academical examples.
Not working the way the web works means it doesn't scale (this has
been pointed out several times by the REST community). The ugly URLs
of Seaside serouisly complicates the the usage of Seaside application
for beginners. Furthermore Seaside is useless if you don't understand
continuations. So could anybody please stop using Seaside?

Cheers
Philippe

Hi Giovanni,

Giovanni Corriga wrote:
> Il giorno gio, 14/06/2007 alle 13.27 +0200, Lukas Renggli ha scritto:
>>> - Url's not RESTlike
>> The question about REST is more a religion than a technical question.
>> Fact is,  Seaside supports RESTful URLs with little additional effort
>> from the developer.
>
> While I agree with Lukas that Seaside supports RESTful URLs, I'd like to
> remind everyone that REST is much more than having meaningful URLs.

That's true and another truth is that everyone has a different opinion
about what REST actually means. Probably because of its name
(REST=Representational State Transfer, what the heck that means?).

What it is very important to understand and what is also a central
principle of REST architecture (1) is the meaning of that R in URL:
Uniform RESOURCE Locator.

So what is then the resource which the URL uniformly locates?

For static pages it is obviously a web page, but what about dynamic web
apps, where pages are generated on the fly?

Here Aida claims that the resource is an object in domain model of your
  application. An URL therefore uniformly locates that domain object.
And each domain object which is worth to be shown as web page has its
own URL.

As a consequence the object references got translated to a web of URLs
pointing to that "web" of objects. We have therefore a 1:1 translation
of "web" of object model to a web of web pages whose represents that
objects. That way Aida tries to preserve a web philosophy in Object
Oriented world.

Those web pages are created on the fly but URL stays the same a whole
lifecycle of domain object. That way such URL is bookmarkable, usable in
e-mails, etc.

Aida understand REST as "REST refers to a collection of network
architecture principles that outline how resources are defined and
addressed" but not as "any simple interface that transmits
domain-specific data over HTTP without an additional messaging layer
such as SOAP or session tracking via HTTP cookies"(1). On the other
words, Aida is a statefull web app server while strict REST promotes
stateless ones.

To conclude, Aida follows the central principle of REST: a web of
resources, and that allows the bookmarkable urls directly to objects in
application's domain model. But it does not follow a stateless principle
of resource state changing, but rather use a statefull approach with
help of cookies.


(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST

Best regards
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Hi Cédrick,

Cédrick Béler wrote:

> same plus the component approach, the halos, debugger etc...  not sure
> it's doable in AIDA (??)

Standalone components already there, debugging is done by raising an UHE
windows on server, which stays there until you comes around. User get
500 internal server error. I thought about web debugger but so far
rather didn't go that way. But changing CSS on the fly that seems very
interesting, specially for web designers, and this will be supported soon.

>> but, even if I don't choose it, I applaud having another ST option
>> for web development.
>>  
> yep, same here ! Since I learned object oriented, I noticed that it's
> all about what you abstract and how... Having several option is very
> interesting for me... AIDA offer direct binding between domain object
> and web page (if I understand well) as straight persistence (with
> gemstone ??) . Other cool stuff is that we now have swazoo in squeak
> since kom isn't really maintained...

You are right about direct bindings from domain objects to their many
representations (views), while persistence is supported just on Gemstone
and VW and this is done by replicating objects from Gemstone to
in-memory cache in VW. But there is no SQL support etc. And I'm
promoting a Smalltalk image as a database approach anyway :)

Best regards
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 03:47:48PM -0400, Chris Cunnington wrote:
Chris,

You are being selfish and parochial. Please consider the big picture.
We don't need a new prime minister, we need a new president.

Dave

p.s. ;)

Il giorno gio, 14/06/2007 alle 11.28 -0300, Sebastian Sastre ha scritto:
>  [SNIP]

Hi Sebastian,

my remark didn't intend to start a Seaside vs. REST flamewar. What I wanted to say is
that since Seaside's architecture is completely different from what REST requires, having
pretty URLs doesn't make Seaside any more RESTful than not having them.

I also believe that any Seaside vs. REST comparison is useless: Seaside is a framework for
building web applications whose primary medium is the web browser; REST is an architecture
for creating web services that may also be consumed by a web browser.

        Giovanni

Hi Giovanni,

Giovanni Corriga wrote:

> I also believe that any Seaside vs. REST comparison is useless: Seaside is a framework for
> building web applications whose primary medium is the web browser; REST is an architecture
> for creating web services that may also be consumed by a web browser.

REST is not only for web services (ala SOAP but with REST way)) but it
is actually important for web applications too. One can of course say
that web service is a more general form web app, but we are talking here
about suitability of REST principle for building complex web applications.

And with Aida is a proof that this is completely doable and and has a
main advantage that an original web spirit is preserved even in most
complex web apps.

Best regards
JAnko


Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si