Comments on: TGIF

By: Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh

Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:14:29 +0000

One reason for using C++ servlet container in favor of Java-based one is size. When running on a machine with low memory (think embedded), and with no hardware JVM implementation, 20-50M that software JVM takes just isn’t acceptable. At the same time CPPSERV with relatively complex application loaded takes about 2-4M or resident memory.
As far as speed goes, I think simple comparison (i.e. taking helloworld kind of servlet) will show very little difference with JIT and all, but with complex applications, with little effort C++ servlets will give speed advantage.

By: alex

alex — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:34:29 +0000

Larry,

PocoData, as I have proposed it, will be an abstraction layer for data (relational, XML and whatever else comes down our way). For relational data, it will support both native and ODBC access. The final interface design is currently brewing in Guenter’s head and AFAIK will be based on DBLite interface with inclusion of some good ideas from SOCI. I have no doubt that Guenter will do the job right, so let’s just recline and wait

Alex

By: Larry Robin

Larry Robin — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 19:00:15 +0000

PocoData! Now that sounds really exciting. I assume this will be an abstraction layer for various DBMS’s like Perl DBI correct? There are some efforts in this regard; to name a few:
http://otl.sourceforge.net/ ( mature and quite robust )
http://soci.sourceforge.net/ ( potentially boost bound )
Or are you proposing a SQL engine written from ground up in modern c++. I am not aware of any such attempt at this. I hear Firebird was re-written in some sort of c++ other than that all engines seem to be written in C. Even relatively new ones such as SQLlite. But if people have written SQL engines in Java ( Clouds cape; Hibernate?? ) I guess one can write one in C++ as well.

By: alex

alex — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:24:21 +0000

I’d say, yes, you are being too pessimistic. As far as prerformance, once the code is out, anyone can do tests. Right now, it would only be speculation because I have done no performance comparisons with Tomcat. Guenter has recently done some tests with Poco HttpServer, and on a 3GHz P4 running Windows Server 2003, the HTTP server (using the HTTPTimeServerExample with logging removed) is able to handle over 2000 connections per second, using 200 threads.

About the infrastructure – most things you are mentioning are avilable in Poco – check the Net library. Molto comes with it’s own Poco webserver and plugin architecture allowing the use of alternate ones. Development of PocoData, (which will include databaase access) will start soon. There already are some proposals for SSL (Poco::Net_SSL exists, but it’s license was not “boostified”).

By: Andy Morton

Andy Morton — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:39:11 +0000

I am curious to hear how a c++ based servlet container performs compared to a Java based server like Tomcat. The c++ version would most likey start up faster but would it necessarily run faster i.e serve content faster? If there is no significant speed advantage for c++ am afraid there won’t be much incentive for developers to toss out the Java based containers.

One other consideration is the availability of the rest of infrustucture that go with web apps; database connections, authentication, encrytpion, load balancing, smtp, xml, web frameworks etc. etc. It is kind of daunting to develop all this stuff in c++ and have all the components play nice together.

Am I being too pessimistic?

By: alex

alex — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 13:54:31 +0000

Tomcat killer? I should have named it Underdog . I’ve been working on and using C++ servlets for a long time – we have an implementation at work (based on this DDJ article code: http://www.ddj.com/184405313 ) that actually runs in production, but never was made platform independent.
There are other attempts out there, beside the ones you are mentioning, this one seems alive:

http://www.total-knowledge.com/progs/cppserv/

At one point there was also an apache module attempt.

RogueWave’s Bobcat became part of their LEIF enterprise framework. Lessons learned from implementing it are described in this article : http://www.ddj.com/184405023

You’re right, C++ is not widely used for internet apps and it is for several reasons:
- C++ is not the easiest thing to deal with
- C++ is not marketed by big corporations as a “langugage de jour”
- there is an abundance of false information on C++ being produced by quasi-experts.
So, is Molto a Tomcat killer? It’s way too early to tell. If it picks up, grows a solid developer base and proves itself in real world, maybe. But only time will tell.

By: Tom Sayed

Tom Sayed — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 11:18:09 +0000

So you are workig on Tomcat ( http://tomcat.apache.org/) killer, right? I have always wondered why there is nothing like Tomcat written in c++. I came across this attempt http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e9626231/cse/servlet.html

but it has been in beta for years and years. Also I believe RogueWave had something in the early 2000-1 but I have never heard of it since.

I don’t know how much c++ is used in internet apps; I suspect not much ( apart from back end servers (DBMS, OS), but these are typically written in pure C).