Re: OT: Re: [Chicken-users] rails-like framework

[F. Wittenberger]

Am Samstag, den 22.04.2006, 17:09 +0200 schrieb Peter Bex:
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 04:21:02PM +0200, J?rg F. Wittenberger wrote:
...
> I've taken a look at the Askemos webpage and read your description a
> number of times, but I can't really grasp *what* Askemos is exactly.
> Is it an operating system, a language, a web development framework, a
> system to make concurrent programming reliable or a system that makes
> it easy to use a number of redundant servers?  Or is it all of these
> things?

It's all of these.  Well the easy part is still sort of questionable.
Depends on what you compare.

If you look at it from 3000 feet, you see an operating system, because
an operating system manages computer resources.  As such it has been
hard all the times to distinguish between operating system and language
implementation.  As long as we talk about assembler or C, things are
clear, but when you add threads and garbage collection, the difference
blurs away.  At the other hand: expect funny reactions when telling
people "this OS is written in Scheme".

If you look at it as an application developer, you always see it though
some HTTP/S request response scheme.  So web dev framework applies.
Since that's what we do to make our living, this aspect gets better over
time.

So it's a reliable distributed - ähm, uh... - app server?

Actually Askemos is only the concept: all objects (be them documents or
processes) of a legal system (to be modelled) are represented at a
"place" (which is basically an agent/object, serves as either deed, file
or process).  Certain properties are ensured by the agreement protocol:
clear authorship, tamper proofed, no rights escalation, no corruption,
agreed execution.  There's a VM, which defines how processes are
executed.  Beeing XML it's as language and hardware independent as it
can get.  Anything would be better but that's why XML is the worst
common denominator everybody accepts as readable.  (The
"Justizkommunikationsgesetz" [would this be "justice comunication
act" ??] for instance defines for Germany that XML would be acceptable.
Not much else.)

Beyond the VM-Level we stop talking about Askemos itself.  There are two
more levels the protocol (http+extension) and the implementation (ball).
If we distinguish these, we come closer to the questions.

Yes, this should be visible at the web site.  Thanks for asking.

Hm, now I'm in trouble: one says "drop the ball part" from the page,
here it's back.

> I'm sorry if I sound stupid and I don't mean to insult, but I really
> don't understand what Askemos does.  I think I speak for everyone here
> if I say that we want a system that is *easy* to hack.  It should be
> simple and lightweight, just like Chicken itself.  What makes Scheme
> interesting is that it's small enough to fit in your head and
> nevertheless is powerful enough to do anything you want.  A web
> framework in Scheme should have the same qualities.

Agreed.  That's our goal as well.  At the application level it's not
that hard.  All you do usually: put all you stuff in a webdav folder.
Start on of you Scheme scripts as a process and you are done.  There's
no principal difference to other frame works.  Except for completeness.

If you need to access C libraries or other compiled code, you need to
export it properly.  Not too hard either, I'd say.

Let's put it that way: once they got it up and running, a few people
liked it.  That's good and bad: good for as relative success, bad for
the total amount.

But it runs single host as well.  And that is at least supposed to work
out of the box.

/Jörg