Segmentation Fault: Core dumped..;-)

Standalone Scripting Application Servers running PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby webapps

Posted : April 29, 2004 at 1:41 am [America/Los_Angeles]

The success of PHP as a web applications aware scripting language and platform needs no further elaboration. Python, Perl or Ruby have all equally excelled as a scripting language of choice for many. They are easy to learn, understand, can do just about anything (thanks to their rich API set) and spare the programmer’s life even without a decent IDE..;-). Ok, good IDEs do a great job, but they’re not a MUST while whipping up code in these languages. Just open your favorite editor, slap around your changes, save and test. No build tools, no IDEs, no Code generation tools - No Problem

However, what has surprised me all these years is the lack of a standalone web application server supporting these platforms. For example, how about a “Standalone PHP Application Server” as follows:

Apache instance(s) + PHP Connector (like mod_jk) + PHP Engine/AppServer(s) + Backend Data Sources

Such a platform would basically have all the benefits of a Tomcat/JBoss J2EE stack behind Apache, except it would involve writing code using a simple yet powerful scripting language like PHP. It would also be extremely server-farm friendly and easy to host business critical applications in Enterprises by offering logically separate instances to the various IT sub-teams. After all, in an Enterprise setting, you better have an infrastructure capable of “isolating” a single team’s “rotten code” to the extent that the damage is “localized”.

Is it the complexity of detaching an engine (in PHP’s case, I think it’s called ‘Zend’) from it’s Apache-like ecosystem and turning it into a standalone daemon (with Apache-2-PHP connector and maybe an optional HTTP listener in-built) that keeps folks from developing this?

With all the excitement around Groovy and reading an article the other day about using Jython/Velocity and Spring to whip up web apps using “scripting” java, one cannot help but wonder why this has not been done with well established scripting languages that have withstood the test of time and, dare I say, are more mature than Groovy can ever claim to be in the next few months, if not years. In fact, I would probably like to see something like:

Apache instance(s) + Universal connector + PHP Or Perl Or Python Or Ruby Pluggable Engine(s)/Application Server(s) + Backend Data Sources

I know this would go a long way in building simple solutions to simple problems and complementing (if not implementing) complex solutions to complex problems ably.

And no, I don’t see this as the next killer app. Just a viable alternative for building apps which just don’t need the capabilities that MVC, IoC and AoP bring to the table. Trust me, you will be surprised how many “fall” in this category in a typical Fortune 500 company.

And in case you were expecting me to end this by picking sides (if I haven’t already ), it can be summed up a follows:

I build applications in Java, but I do things in Perl|Python|PHP

- Anand

Category: Application Development