Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 16 Apr 1999 19:10:29 +0200 | Subject | Re: 2.2.5 optimizations for web benchmarks? | From | (Kristian Koehntopp) |
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In netuse.lists.linux-kernel you write: >Roxen Challenger is written in Pike, which they say "somewhat resembles C >and Java, but is not quite like either of those languages". I haven't looked >at it to see what it is, maybe just further developed from uLPC.
Pike is a much further developed uLPC. It is a byte-compiled language, that is interpreted at runtime. The Roxen Challenger web server and the Pike language are not exactly the speed combo for several reasons (Pike being only one of them) and like to have loads of memory. They are not slow either, but a performance leader is surely not written in an interpreted byte-compiled language. I would try phttpd (http://www.signum.se/phttpd) for a C-based ultra-fast, low memory footprint solution that is up to the task of tackling Zeus. Don't know how phttpd does on Linux, though: I have only seen it on Solaris.
The Challenger excels in GUI driven configurability and in HTML generating features. The server allows you to create your own markup, which is interpreted at page-serving time and is converted to HTML on the fly. This is a lot of like CFML in Cold Fusion, only more powerful, more flexible and more reliable under load and for free (GPLed system).
It is also recursive, that is, Challengers tags can generate new tags which are ultimately expanded into HTML after an arbitrary number of iterations. And Challenger allows you to define container tags which conditionally expand to HTML. Both of this means that the server can only deliver the first byte of a page after the last byte of a page has been handled (actually, after the last byte in a defined container has been handled). As you may easily imagine, this system introduces potentially large latencies (think SQL querying tags that build large TABLE structures), which surely is going to ruin your benchmarks, but is just great when you need to design dynamic content.
The Challenger server may not be the performance leader, but it surely redefined comfort with regard to configuration and web design. It is also great for separating page layout and page content.
There are a bunch of very expensive, very powerful tools built upon the GPLed Roxen Challenger Webserver. These form the Roxen Platform, a commercial product. If you need a publishing system product or support for your GPLed webserver, this is very much the way to go.
>I wouldn't be surprised if Challenger has really good benchmarks, given how >good Spinner was for its time :-)
Given enough memory, Challenger has okay benchmarks that are solid under load. Due to the construction of the system, Challenger will never be performance leader - that is okay, too, because the other features of the system are well worth that price.
After all, serving speed is a problem that can be solved by buying a larger iron, too. Creating and maintaining content in time is the much harder problem in most cases, and this is where the Roxen Platform really shows its strengths.
Kristian
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