I have written many services resources on the DRUPAL, "n" number of API hit comes to the DRUPAL CMS and access the data in the DRUPAL database.
My question is, when I hit service, Is DRUPAL CMS calling the bootstrap and verify every modules is loaded or not ?
Because I am wondering, there are nearly 100 web services, no more DRUPAL UI is consumed in this project.
So web service will eat site performance ?
Each request to one of your services will bootstrap Drupal in order to be able to reliably uses its APIs. And yes, this is a performances hit since bootstrapping Drupal is not lightweight.
In addition, depending on how the services are build, they may not provide any kind of caching, unlike traditional pages. Also a Web Services driven page will probably require more than one request, increasing the load on the server.
So yes, Web Services may eat your site performances.
Related
I'm brand new to C#/.NET
Why does ASP.NET have so many different choices of projcets? (Web Application, Web API, Web Site, MVC ect). I just want to listen on a tcp port, and a way to send a response. If there are libraries to help me do routine stuff like constructing the HTTP request, parsing the header, ect - then cool. But I don't want a super opinionated framework that tries to do everything under the sun.
Why do I need IIS at all?
Addressing your points in reverse order, first - why do I need IIS?
The answer is, maybe you don't. If you are doing a simple listener that won't be exposed to the public internet, then you don't need it.
If you are doing a web application that needs to scale, be robust and easy to manage then it can help you with:
Logging
Operating in a multi-server environment for scale/high availability
Handling multiple requests in an isolated way
Serving multiple applications from the same host with sandboxing to ensure each application has guaranteed resources (memory, CPU)
Application lifecycle management
IP address restrictions
support for FTP, CGI, WebDAV
URL rewriting
Response header manipulation
Failed request tracing
Protection against some DoS exploits like slow HTTP attacks
Etc.
In short, it is an industrial strength, real world web server that will keep your application up reliably in a hostile world and scale as your application grows. it is certainly overkill for some cases if you don't need this kind of scale/high availability/management capability. In those cases you have the option to self host ASP.Net in a Windows Service or even a console app. This might sound complicated, but it has been made pretty simple by OWIN - Open Web Interface for .Net. This is an abstraction of the interface used by Asp.Net to communicate with its hosting server.
There is a very good tutorial on how to self host web API in a console app here
http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/hosting-aspnet-web-api/use-owin-to-self-host-web-api
It does exactly what you ask for in your comment:
You create a console app project
You add references to the right assemblies (the tutorial uses NuGet to download the assembly packages)
You code up your web operation logic
You compile
You run the resulting exe
That's it!
On your second point about ASP.Net - it is a framework that has gone through a lot of evolution trying to keep up with very rapid changes in the web development world. This meant it got a bit bloated and lost some of its coherence, but recently the developers have been focussed on making it more lightweight, more modular and simpler. Scott Guthrie summarises it in his blog:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/introducing-asp-net-5
Why does ASP.NET have so many different choices of projcets? (Web Application, Web API, Web Site, MVC ect). I just want to listen on a tcp port, and a way to send a response. etc...
Because each project has its own purpose.
If you want to just listen on a TCP port then you could go learn Microsoft's Katana OWIN (but I highly doubt if this is what you want).
Katana OWIN
Briefly going through each projects purpose:
"Web Application" actually opens up another window and lets you choose from the following:
Web API is for exposing RESTful services or JSON data.
Web Forms is for making web pages that use Web Form components.
(A bit like Windows Forms, but Web)
MVC is for making Model-View-Controller web applications. This is where you build components with a separation of concerns. Model for data. View for what the user sees. Controller for controlling how your page behaves.
Why do I need IIS at all?
IIS is for serving .NET applications.
Without it, it would be quite hard to serve .NET applications.
I'll start with 2 then move on to your first question. IIS will run whatever the .NET web service you need, be it a monstrous WCF service, an ASP.NET application or the most basic http handler.
To my knowledge, ISS is the most straightforward way to use .NET web services. If you are used to PHP, it's basically LAMP or WAMP for .NET, which means it is sort of necessary. There are alternatives, as Mike Goodwin points out, but I have to admit I am not familiar with those third parties. Since replacing a layer for another doesnt mean much, I would stick to the "normal" procedure.
Since you dont want the framework to do a truckload of operations for you, your best bet might be along those lines:
Create a basic ASP.NET projet
Remove the default ASP.Net page because it seems you dont want it
Add a Generic Handler to your project. This will result in a myFile.ashx, which handles http requests and let you build any response you want
Of course, if you dont want to bother with IIS configurations, you'll need someone to setup an URL on IIS and map it against your handler repository.
EDIT:
"Abstraction layers" would be the very definition of frameworks, for good or ill, so you're stucked with it.
Now, since you have a low level background a not-so-intrusive way to work with the .NET web services would probably be the three steps I suggested earlier. You are still stucked with IIS though, in order handles the communications (i.e. manages sockets/requests). That's the way the framework works.
STILL, THERE IS HOPE. If you have complete control over your server (which is not my case, some other IT team manages the web servers), you certainly could build a windows service that listens to some socket and work the requests accordingly. It is a most unusal solution if you want to serve web pages, but would work rather well if you only want to push some data through http requests. If you go down this path, I suggest you take a look at the System.Net namespaces, you'll find some classes like "Socket" there. Combined with a console application or a windows service, you could work something out.
One of my coworkers is former microcontroller designer, I know exactly what kind of feeling you have towards the .NET framework. You'll go through some frustrations at times, but most of the time there are work arrounds. Feel free to request more details if you need some.
We have some portlets which are JSR 286 complaint. We sell those portlets with a liferay-server to our customers. One customer asked if it's possible to use those with Drupal instead of Liferay.
I can not find any information that Drupal supports jsr-286-portlets. So its not possible to use the liferay-portlets with Drupal, correct?
I think you may have the following options:
Web Service for Remote Portlets 2.0 (WSRP)
Quoting from WSRP specification:
The Web Services for Remote Portlets specification defines a web
service interface for accessing and interacting with interactive
presentation-oriented web services.
Basically you need a running instance of Liferay exposing your portlets as presentation-oriented web service to Drupal that will consume them and send back to the client.
The good news is that Drupal seems to support it. You need to enable Drupal as a consumer of WSRP, see that Drupal page, and Liferay as a producer, see here.
Using IFrame
Similar to first solution but with less integration and more work to do about security because the client will contact directly the Liferay server, so you'll need to expose it as a public server (if not in a Intranet scenario) and you'll probably need a Single Sign On solution for authentication.
I suggest to take a look at that document about Liferay Application Integration Strategies because recap very well several integration strategies with pros and cons (including the two I cited).
We have many custom built web applications (both external & internal) written in Classic ASP and ASP.NET 2.0 technologies. Internal users can upload files to these websites, which can then be viewed by External Users. In some cases, external users can upload documents as well.
Screenshot #1 gives a brief idea about the existing architecture.
Internal users upload documents to custom web applications. These documents are stored in a folder structure defined under the web application.
Meta data and user permissions like who can access the documents are stored in SQL Server database.
The same set of documents that are being uploaded to custom web applications also exist in SharePoint. However, the custom web applications are unaware of SharePoint. So, users have to download them from SharePoint and then Upload it to the custom web applications. We are currently using SharePoint 2010.
External users can also upload documents to the custom web applications. The meta data and user permissions of the document are saved into database based on the user who is uploading the document.
Screenshot #1:
Screenshot #2 shows the architecture that I am trying to achieve. I have done very little SharePoint development. Mostly, I have used the SharePoint web services to retrieve some list content but nothing more than that. Our future Custom Web Applications might be written using ASP.NET MVC. Please find the questions after the screenshot.
Screenshot #2:
Here are my questions:
I would like to have internal users continue to upload and maintain their documents in SharePoint. User security model is already defined in the SQL Server database. This security permissions should be available in the SharePoint document properties so users can choose who can view the document from the custom web applications. How can I achieve this? Should I have to copy the SQL Server user permissions info to SharePoint?
I believe that SharePoint Web Services or Business Connectivity Services (BCS) can help in retrieving the document and its related info from SharePoint. Which one of these would better suit this scenario?
Custom web app should display only the committed versions of the documents. If a user has checked out a document in SharePoint to make any changes, that checked out version of the document should not be visible to External users. Is that possible?
Has anyone tried this approach? Are there any pitfalls with this model? Are there any performance concerns with this design?
Will this design be of any hindrance if I rewrite our existing applications using ASP.NET MVC?
Is it possible to make use of SharePoint search feature within the custom web application (ASP.NET Web Forms / ASP.NET MVC)? In other words, can I send search criteria from custom web app and have SharePoint do the search and return the results back to custom web app?
I really appreciate your inputs.
Thanks in advance.
Question 1
Hard to say without having more details. So I'm going to assume that you currently use Active Directory for your authentication store. So this means that your SQL Server defines a list of roles and then has assigned memberships to these roles. I'm going to assume that your assigned membership is to AD users or groups. If this is true then I think your on the right path to push your permissions from SQL Server into SharePoint. SharePoint's API will accommodate what you need to do, however SharePoint has no built into mechanism for syncing your permission changes so that means you end up writing a whole lot of plumbing code. I would recommend that you research products that can handle the synchronization for you. Microsoft MIIS (I believe it is called Forefront Identity Management now) offer a set of architecture patterns that you should investigate.
Question 2
SharePoint Web Services or the SharePoint Client Access Services should work fine. I would highly recommend that use a proxy pattern to isolate your application from SharePoint calls (so you can isolate your application from SharePoint upgrades and potential content management server changes).
Question 3
Yes, that is possible. If you are using the publishing features of SharePoint Server (NOT SharePoint Foundation) you will have an easy way of identifying the current published version. Otherwise the service account you query with should be setup so it can only read published versions then SharePoint will automatically trim your query.
Question 4
I have not personally tried this design, but I really like the concept of creating a content management domain and then putting an abstract service layer on top of it. Will you have scale problems, depends on how you configure SharePoint and your applications. You can do it right or wrong. An depth answer between the two cannot be covered here. My one piece of advice is to make sure you plan for caching in your service interfaces (cache, cache, cache).
Question 5
Not if you implement it as a Service Layer. You would just use a repository pattern to call the service and return back entities for your model.
Question 6
Yes, Search is exposed via an API so it can be wrapped in a service layer too.
Good luck and feel free to contact me directly for more in depth discussion.
I am looking to create a lightweight, heavy traffic, db site. It will be standard 3 tiered architecture in asp.net. Part of this site is web-based, but most of the functions will ideally be available on mobile devices, also.
That being said, I know that web services is the classic answer for this, since I can access a web service from many platforms. However, I also know that ashx files are the most light-weight. Is there a way to access ashx files from non-web platforms? and if so, how would this compare to a web service to do the same thing.
a good example: a login page that calls either a web service or ashx file to authenticate.
Thanks!
Eric
[EDIT] I was thinking along the lines of iphone/android/pre type of mobile apps.
How will you display on the mobile devices? You've said "web-based" and "mobile devices" but these can be the same thing. E.g. Through Control Adapters
You should also look at ASP.Net MVC if you haven't. It should help with the tiered design and performance that you are looking to get out of your application.
An .ASHX file will efficiently deliver any content type that you require. That is one of it's key strengths. So the answer to your question is yes, it can be used to deliver to non-web platforms via SOAP or other HTTP transport schemes. This would be a lot more involved than using web services.
With your login example, then main benefit that I see is that your ASHX file can use multiple transport schemes, not just SOAP. So you can use the lighter weight REST for instance.
Are both completely different concepts? Or is there an overlap in their meaning?
Would it be correct to say that a Web Framework is used for the creation of a front-end, while a CMS is used for the back-end?
If yes, then should the Web Framework use the same technology as the CMS? For example could Ruby on Rails be used in combination with Drupal? Or doesn't that make any sense at all?
Are both completely different concepts? Or is their an overlap in their meaning?
A web (application) framework is a lower level, generic toolkit for the development of web applications. That could be any type of system managing and processing data while exposing it's data and services to human users(via web browsers and other interactive clients) as well as machines via the http protocol.
A CMS is one type of such applications: a system to manage content shown in websites. Usually/historically, this mainly means managing (pieces of) text of "pages" shown in a web site, and useres that have different levels of access to manage this content. That's where the C and the M come from.
With a CMS, you can manage web content. With a Web framework, you build web applications.
Would it be correct to say that a Web Framework is used for the creation of a front-end, while a CMS is used for the back-end?
No. It would be correct to say that a web framework can be used to create a CMS.
Both contain parts that work on the backend as well as on the front end.
Often, a CMS is based on a web framework - sometimes CMS developers build there own web framework, and sometimes they even expose the API of this framework, so a developer can create extensions to the CMS in a way as if he would develop an application with a web framework. Drupal really does this, so you can create real web applications based on the integrated framework - with the upside that they will also be easily to integrate into the CMS.
But that(exposing the API of a web framework) is no necessary criteria for being called a CMS.
If yes, then should the Web Framework use the same technology as the CMS? For example could Ruby on Rails be used in combination with Drupal? Or doesn't that make any sense at all?
It's be possible to combine two existing systems build with these two, (e.g. because you want to show some data in a web site managed by drupal, that already exists in a Rails-based system).
But as Drupal also provides you some of the genric functionality of it's underlying web framework, it might not be necessary. You would have to manage and learn two very different systems and handle all the problems with there interoperation. So, I'd try to build a Website with only one of these if possible and only combine them if theres a good reason to.
They're different concepts. A CMS can be built on top of a web-app framework, but a web-app framework has no direct relationship to a CMS. Its at a lower level, providing a platform for any type of web-app to be built on top of it, of which a CMS is an example.
Drupal runs on php and Ruby on rails runs on, well, Ruby, so they wouldn't play together.
Just to muddy the waters a bit, Drupal describes itself as a content managment framework which is essentially a content management system with hooks to extend it. Which does create an overlap. The drupal overview describes this better than I could.
Would it be correct to say that a Web Framework is used for the creation of a front-end, while a CMS is used for the back-end?
It's not "correct" but it's not wrong, either. A web framework is a general concept -- many things count. A CMS is a specific concept, often built within a web framework. Sometimes CMS's are stand-alone web applications. More often, however a CMS is a back-end things that require a customized presentation front-end.
Should the Web Framework use the same technology as the CMS?
Shouldn't matter. At the end of the API definition, the Framework and CMS can have any implementation at all.
Web App Frameworks -- generally -- must either serve HTTP requests or plug into something like Apache.
A CMS is a glorified database, and any sensible API is good. Most often, however, they're also using HTTP as their interface protocol.
Could Ruby on Rails be used in combination with Drupal?
Sure. Purists will object, but there's no technical reason why they can't cooperate.