Erbix: Server-side JavaScript Platform (with JS AppMarket) | Hacker News Reader

Erbix: Server-side JavaScript Platform (with JS AppMarket)

erbix.com

22 pointsvladd10 comments

The AppJets people were definitely on something. So it is nice to see that the idea survives.

I personally go the nodejs way, the asynchronous way, but that's because I need raw metal level performance. The event based programming model of nodejs is hard to get right, dealing with concurrent activities is probably harder than it is already with threads.

PostgreSQL comes preinstalled with Erbix. I hence assume that it is fair to call Erbix an SQL JavaScript platform.

However, according to the FAQ, "transactions" are not supported yet, this is puzzling, how is synchronization handled?

I saw no mention of Comet either.

So, I do like the idea but the lack of Comet and SQL transactions seriously limit the range of addressable applications.

If I were Erbix, I would brand this "alpha" rather than "beta" and implement Comet & SQL transaction before going to "beta" stage.

However there is value in the "release early, release often" motto, so maybe I am wrong or maybe I missed something and synchronization issues are dealt with in some magical way?

Thanks for your comments.

We actually have synchronization an transactions. You can execute any SQL statement, including BEGIN, ROLLBACK and COMMIT. It's just that we haven't finished the database driver wrapper yet, so you have to handle them manually for now. I was unclear in the FAQs, will update the page.

Installing the blog right from the marketplace was impressive, non-technical users will love this.

How about integration with other frameworks ? CommonJS is promissing but I'm sure RingoJS/NodeJS can't do everything yet.

EDIT: I was thinking of non-javascript frameworks. Apparently the creators are sticking to a "there is only commonjs" policy so far.

It's really easy to port/wrap plain JavaScript code to Erbix/CommonJS; this is the first thing we've noticed while coding on Erbix Blog/Form Creator/ActiveRecord (included in Blog, a port from TrimPath Junction).

One other example si UnderscoreJS, the library is already "ported"; this code does the trick: if (typeof exports !== 'undefined') exports._ = _;

http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/

We would welcome your suggestions on the frameworks you want us to take a look into.

It's nice that it already "just works" -- here's a direct link to the bit of code in question:

http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.h...

Regarding non-JavaScript frameworks: We are considering other languages (Java especially, given our implementation). Technically, we can add any Java code and run it directly, however there are security issues with this approach. So these frameworks need to be hand-picked and ported with security in mind.

Regarding on how fast the server-side JavaScript is catching on: http://persvr.org/Page/Persevere

We're using RingoJS under the hood (a server-side JavaScript engine similar with NodeJS --they're both CommonJS compliant) and provide integration with a browser-based editor, online hosting and a marketplace with e.g. two GPLed server-side JS apps, Form Creator and Erbix Blogs (which we've launched today - you can find more details about the announcement at http://groups.google.com/group/ringojs/browse_thread/thread/... ).

We wanted to do a rate-our-startup on HackerNews for some time to get feedback for pivoting the next iteration of Erbix as a JavaScript platform. Due to today's launches, it looks like a good time to request some feedback and what you'd like to see next from us.

Great Job. I tried the apps from the market place. Everything runs flawless. Anybody seems to have a market place these times and I really like the idea :)

For those who don't know the AppJet web framework, which was mentioned several times. It is still hosted here: http://apps.jgate.de

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