Re: [DotGNU]uServ: A Web Hosting and Content Sharing Tool for the Masses

[Norbert Bollow]

> I still have a nagging feeling that if we can't solve
> the distributed data server issue, we have a basic 
> problem.

I agree.  Without a distributed webservice server platform,
webservices are simply not going to be reliable enough for
serious business use.

> Here are several papers that are most intriguing along this line.
> 
> http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/bayardo/userv/userv.html

This is a very good idea.  We should certainly have something
like this as part of DotGNU.  I'm writing to the authors of the
article to ask them whether they're interested in cooperating
with DotGNU; I'll let you all know how it goes.

BTW I've also written to the Anthill developers, as that's
another very interesting idea.  (Bill, thank you so much for
posting these links!)

> And refered to from that is:
> 
> http://www10.org/cdrom/papers/506/index.html

Some very good points in the introduction, but I'm not
contacting the authors about possible cooperation because I
fundamentally disagree with their use of a bastardized
simplified version of XML which they call XTalk.  I think
we should stick with proper XML.

In case someone wonders why, consider this statement from the
article:  "None of these advantages are completely without
cost. Our XTalk interpreters offer no type checking and
conversion, well-formedness checking, or ambiguity resolution
that are features of many fully compliant XML parsers. However,
our view is that these features are typically unnecessary in a
deployed application."  In a webservices context, that is a
recipe for having many disasters.

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
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Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet   (near Zurich, Switzerland)
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