Re: An interface to Apache

[Randy Terbush]
|
| CGI is certainly an option.

I disagree. CGI gives you a session-by-session based interaction with a very limited user interface, namely the FORMS interface in your browser. you could use a Java applet, but I have a *very* strong distaste for using Java in important applications¹.

I am currently using PHP/FI a lot to do database interfaces on WWW and sometimes it's a REAL struggle not to have direct access to the data. you have to think in terms of "requests" and "sessions" and you end up doing a lot of ineffective, ugly, and potentially risky hackery to preserve state, carry data around etc.

I think we should forget about WWW for a while and just imagine it's not there. it's not important to solve the problem and I feel the problem is best solved by trying to build something robust and portable that is independent of the WWW-server.

¹) my company did some Java development for a large customer last year

   and we spent 2 months to properly "port" it to all platforms that    had Netscape with Java support at that time. needless to say we    lost money on that project since it took longer. Java is NOT ready    for applications that are not toys for at least a few years more.

-Bjørn

-- 
 Bjørn Borud        | "The Net interprets censorship 
 http://www.pvv.unit.no/~borud/>  | as damage and routes around it."
 UNIX person, one of "them"            |         - John Gilmore

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