NetKernel
One of the many bad habits I’m yet to break is slumming it through Slashdot comment threads. They’re mostly dross, of course, but occasionally there’s something useful. Today there was a post on Optimizing PHP and Apache. Like any good slashdotter I didn’t bother to read the article, but I did find a comment that claimed:
We have recently ported Sugar CRM PHP/Apache to NetKernel and lost over 95% of the code and subsecond response times … For me performance is important but maintainability is equal. The less code the easier to maintain. There is a great white paper from the NK guys here.
As a firm believer in the maxim that the way to programming nirvana is to write the absolute minimum amount of code, this sounded interesting. I had a read of the whitepaper. It’s overly wordy and has a generally breathless tone, e.g.:
To demonstrate that these statements are in fact simple facts, the paper introduces and builds upon a foundation of fundamental principles. It is likely that these principles will challenge your understanding of the nature of computation.
A foundation of fundamental principles? Eww.
But there was some interesting stuff in there. The white paper introduces a model termed Resource-Oriented Computing (ROC), which in a sentence is like the web crossed with shell pipes. Yahoo pipes is used as an example of a Resource-Oriented System. The idea also seemed to have something in common with Service-oriented architecture, particularly the emphasis on combining loosely coupled, interoperable services. NetKernel is the framework built by 1060 Research to support the implementation of ROC applications.
The white paper didn’t really give me a picture of what a full scale Resource-Oriented application would look like, but I’m looking forward to the promised next installments. Very excellent blogger Jon Udell took a look at NetKernel a few years ago and seemed to be quite impressed.
(On May 28th, 2007 at 6:36 am)
Just to let you know - we have published a new white paper, “Developer’s Introduction to Resource-Oriented Computing”, that is more concrete than the one you read and mention. It is located, along with our other white papers at http://www.1060research.com/netkernel/whitepapers/
You also mention a desire to see a full application written using NetKernel. The best available example is our forum application which is documented at http://www.1060research-server-1.co.uk/docs/3.0.0/book/architectguide/app-forum-lite-doc-guide.html
The full source code for this application is included with the NetKernel download.
(On May 28th, 2007 at 7:30 am)
Hey Randy,
Thanks for letting me know, I will definitely be checking this stuff out.