Re: cutting out the middleperl

On 22 Mar 2007 14:58:15 -0700, Kev <kevinjamesfield@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm still in the design phase of a project.  I was just wondering if
> anyone has any thoughts or experience on the idea of cutting the P out
> of the LAMP (or in my case, WAMP for now) stack.  What I mean is
> having
> everything encapsulated into sql (or plpgsql or plperl where needed)
> functions stored in the pgsql server, and have Apache communicate with
> pgsql via a tiny C program that pretty much just checks whether the
> incoming function is on the allowed list and has the proper data
> types,
> then passes it straight in.  Any errors are logged as potential
> security
> breaches.
>
> I'm really new to mod_perl too, so another question would be if this
> would be much faster than a simple perl script that did the same
> thing.
>
> I ask this because I realize I need to carefully check data coming
> into
> pgsql functions as well as at the client end.  Why maintain a bunch of
> scripts with names similar to the functions they're calling and all
> performing similar checks anyway?
>
> I was kinda salivating at the thought of how fast things would be if
> you
> cut out the A as well, by using a Flash applet to give socket access
> to
> JavaScript.  But then I guess you have to make your pgsql server
> itself
> publicly accessible on some port.  Is that just asking for trouble?
>
> I appreciate any comments or thoughts anyone might have on this.

IMO, I think 'thin middleware' approach is a great way to design
applications...so you are right on the money.  The web server. IMO,
should be mostly concerned about rendering html.  I don't think
eliminating the middleware is really practical.  While you could use a
thick-client javascript framework like GWT and write your queries in
javascript (getting data back via json), I don't think it's really
possible to secure this properly without killing the 'ease of
implementation' factor.

Then again, it's no worse then your typical old school visual basic or
delphi in-house application so common in the 90's.  I really miss the
simplicity of Delphi.

merlin