[328] in ad-lib
Geopac Comments...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Grant Young )
Thu Apr 13 09:21:00 1995
To: opac-lib@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 95 09:20:11
From: gyoung@MIT.EDU (Grant Young )
From the server side of things...
1. The server doesn't release sockets used for the Gala protocol when the
client disconnects ungracefully. This eventually results in tying up all
the available pipes and refusal to to allow further connections.
2. The scripts to bring the servers up and down are an ugly hack and they
screw up my terminal's display characteristics. There's got to be a better
way.
In general the server feels like a first attempt at writing a server with
limited goals (and it does mostly work, cf. Horizon's Z39.50 server simply
didn't) but there's probably much better ways to implement handling network
connections dynamically rather than depending on pipes. I'm mostly giving
my impression here since I've never tried to write a client/server server
program. It works but it feels like it won't scale well to large numbers
of users.
Installing Geopac comments...
1. It should be able to lend itself to a file copy installation (rather
than a Windows install) so we can distribute it better. Or better
installation documentation for folks who have to manage mass installations
so that we can fashion our own install strategies.
2. Network installations: It should also have configurable and settable
temporary directories (in the *.ini files) so that you can install the
program code in a network directory and direct workstation disk activity to
workstation specific disk space. That would allow us to install Geopac
easily on a server and simply configure each workstation to use a local
hard disk for temporary files. This would require moving the user-defined
geopac.ini file someplace other than the c:\windows directory since that
might be shared by a number of workstations. Perhaps it should be in the
startup directory instead?
3. It would also be nice to be able to limit user file saving to specified
disk drives (i.e. only floppy drives) so we don't have to worry about users
using and or accessing hard disk space. It would also simplify the task
for users of specifying where to put their downloads.
Those are my wish list items. Geopac ain't that horrible, just kind of
limited and a support headache waiting to happen. For single users running
in limited environment it works OK. For running as a distributed public
application it needs work to help manage the support issues. If they can
get these right for Geopac, it'll make the setting up the rest of the Geos2
family of products better.
-- Grant
