[e-lang] E research topics

[David Chizmadia (JHU)]

James Graves wrote:
> David Chizmadia (JHU) wrote:
> 
>> 2. EBASS (E-Based Application Server System)
>>
>> Goal:
>>     Develop an E application server framework (like J2EE or the
>> CORBA Component Model) 
>> ...
> 
> I second this one.  Though I'm not a fan of either J2EE or CORBA.  I can 
> go into more detail about why for each of these, but the short, short 
> version:
> 
> 	J2EE: The words "horrible" and "bloated" come to mind.
> 	Allegedly some of this is supposed to be fixed in 3.0.
> 
> 	CORBA: Failed in the marketplace for several reasons including
> 	brittle interfaces.

    No particular disagreement with your points there. I was mainly
trying to provide context. I big advantage of the CCM is it is more
model than anything else, so there is a more abstract foundation
that could be re-factored using object capability patterns.

> So what is a good application server framework?

    I believe that, contrary to my original message, that would
actually the true unique contribution to come out of EBASS research.

> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Actually, just trying to write a large-ish real world application will 
> likely illuminate some significant issues with how E is going to work in 
> practice.

    Absolutely!!

> So what would be a good large-scale app for E anyway?  How about a 
> version of Second Life that works in a more distributed manner.  Instead 
> of relying on just centralized servers, spread the processing and 
> storage of objects to all the end-user machines instead.

    This would actually bring E full circle, since it evolved out of
work the MarkM and others were doing on a virtual economy
application at Electric Communities. Also interestingly, this has
been proposed before in the form of implementing Squeak-E to serve
as a scripting language for Croquet.

    My own thoughts are that on the server side, implementing a
content management system - like ZOPE - in E would be quite
interesting. This would be especially true if E moves to using Tyler
Close's HTTPSY protocol beneath CapTP, since it would then be
directly usable by standard web browsers.

    On the client side, expanding CapDesk to become a generalized
secure rich client platform (CapClient?) would be a tremendous
development. Combined with EBASS, we would then have the ability to
create end-to-end secure applications.

-DMC