[4suite] Building a Website with 4suite

[Jeremy Kloth]

I've only responded to the questions that I can answer definitively.  I'll 
leave that rest to the other developers.

On Thursday 06 February 2003 05:04 pm, Mongryong wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 14:44, Jeremy Kloth wrote:
> > Just to be clear, 4Suite does *NOT* use the Python BaseHTTPServer as it
> > doesn't support several of the things we require.  For all practical
> > purposes, our server code (Controller) is a port of Apache written in
> > Python with modifications to support multiple protocols in the same
> > process and connection pooling.  It should be fairly scalable except on
> > machines with multiple processors (an issue with Python threads
> > actually).
>
> Is there any particular reason why one could/should not use Apache as a
> front-end via mod_python?

We need to support multiple protocols (FtRPC, FTP, HTTP) within a single 
server.  Apache 2 supports this, however mod_python does not (as of yet) 
expose that functionality.

> Does 4Suite have a 'connection pool manager'?  I guess the pool manager
> could also used to manage XSLT Processors.

The 'pool' (more of a job queue) is integrated into the Controller 
architecture as it is designed to handle the incoming requests only.

Each incoming request is represented as a new instance of the particular 
handler (like Python's BaseHTTPServer) instead of passing around just the raw 
data about the request (like Apache/mod_python).  The impact of creating a 
new instance every time is the same as simply creating a dictionary so the 
benefits of using an instance win out since an instance actually creates two 
PyObjects when created (two malloc's over just one for most objects).

> Using Apache as a front-end would solve some of my other issues (URL
> rewriting & HTTPS) and would allow me to use the other Apache features.
> Plus, you get the benefit of a widely used web-server.

The only issue is that 4Suite provides more than just HTTP access.  Because of 
this, it makes it difficult to use Apache/mod_python.

> Yes, I know...a lot of questions. TIA.

Please feel free to ask as many as you like.

Jeremy Kloth