Re: JGnat support. was NetBeans and ADA?(Co-opt Java?)

[Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr>]

Ingo Marks <adv@region-nord.de> writes:

> The current big problems Java and .NET suffer is performance. We all know 
> that Java is pretty slow compared to C++ and Ada. AFAIK Microsoft has the 
> same problem with .NET. Here it's not the C# compiler (they have a good JIT 
> compiler for it) but the very slow XML based webservices. In one computer 
> journal MS recently recommended NOT to use .NET based webservices. XML is 
> based on top of HTTP and that on TCPIP, so there is much overhead.

This is strange, SOAP as been created and pushed by Microsoft. SOAP is XML
plus transport layer (one used a lot is HTTP). Of course it is an overhead for
an addition style webservices...

> Ada provides good networking and tasking capabilities. There exist an Ada 
> based webserver (AWS) which you can compile your own Ada applications into, 
> so that you don't have CGI overhead and compilation overhead (as PHP, Perl, 
> MSIL etc. suffer). With Adas tasking capabilities it should be possible to 
> write network "task" based web applications instead of page (session) based 
> like CGI. Currently you have the choice to use CGI (with C, C++ etc.) or 
> script based server modules (mod_php, mod_perl for Apache, for example). 
> They are all "paged based", that means they must use sessions to recover 
> all user data between page hits (for Java there exists another event based 
> solution). My idea is, that in Ada you could use tasks instead of sessions 
> or events. For every user a "session task" would be started which surveys 
> the user's actions and handle his requests. 

I don't think this is possible. How would you handle 2000 connections at the
same time... 2000 tasks, meaning 2000 OS threads, most of them doing just
nothing because users are reading most of the time the pages... This would be
a big waste of computer resources.

BTW, what the problem with current AWS session handling ? Maybe we can
improve it...

> That way, even realtime 
> behaviour would be possible with Ada based web applications. I haven't 
> heard about any realtime features in Java oder .NET so far.
> 
> Because Ada has standardized compilers (GNAT) for many platforms (Windows, 
> Linux, BSD, MacOSX, Sun etc.), AWS could run on several platforms and make 
> binary data exchange between different AWS possible. I have played a little 
> bit with AWS, it seems not to be pretty stable yet, but it could be 
> enhanced.

We are working on it. Version 1.3 should be more stable. But please if you
have any problems you can report do so, we'll try to fix that. Without
report we just can't find all problems :)

> The advantages of Ada based web applications are evident:
> 
> - webserver integrated Ada applications (no CGI overhead, no compilation 
> overhead)
> - binary data transfer between different AWS platforms (no XML overhead)

Yet you need SOAP for communication with the outside world. SOAP is an
overhead right, but with today computers it is not a big problem and with
tomorow computers...

> - session tasks survey user actions and allow proper actions within given 
>   time restrictions
> - better security (due to Ada features (no buffer overflows etc.))

And since you do not have to spawn executables with AWS, you have better
security too.

> could result to more powerful and much faster solutions than both J2EE 
> and.NET.

This is indeed something I have experienced. AWS servers can be very fast.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
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--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"