

GLASS is now free up to 16 GB and 2 CPU (formerly $7000/year) - pietrofmaggi
http://seaside.gemstone.com/docs/GLASS-Announcement.htm

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pietrofmaggi
Just to put a little more info in the post, Gemstone (acquired in May by
VMWare's Springsource
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/06/spring_gemstone_futu...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/06/spring_gemstone_future_middleware/))
put together GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, Smalltalk) as a service
for Seaside deployment.

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limmeau
Is anyone using that here, and if, what for?

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igrekel
I am using it for a web application I sell to public utilities.

GLASS stands for "Gemstone Linux Apache Seaside Smalltalk".
<http://seaside.gemstone.com/>

To put it simply, it is an object database. Instead of having clients
connecting to it, it is a bit like running the Seaside framework right in the
database making development just like having infinite RAM. The database itself
is made in two parts, a Stone which persists data and Gems who execute pretty
much everything. Scaling usually mean adding more Gems.

The free version prevents you from distributing the gems over several
machines. It also limits the size of the database itself (it used to be 4GB,
now 16GB) and the size of in-memory data (used to be 1GB, now 2GB).

I use nginx and connect and distribute to several gems through FastCGI. It is
a VERY convenient environment to develop for with pretty good performance,
then again, I don’t have many concurrent users anyway. I still get better
performance than my original web app with a Postgres backend but I beleive it
is a lot due to changes in my design.

~~~
jhancock
Any feel for "how many objects" 16GB holds? Sure, I know it depends on how big
your objects are. But do you have any rule of thumb?

~~~
igrekel
It is indeed difficult, I had evaluated mine based on the size of my previous
postgres database and had greatly overestimated the size. Sadly I don't have
my numbers from back then.

It is especially difficult to evaluate since in Smalltalk, you don't specify
the type of variables and many of the basic types like numbers will change
type to best fit the represented number.

For what it is worth, numbers from a mark and sweep of the repository that
happened minutes ago: "<537228> possible dead objects, occupying approximately
<48350520> bytes, may be reclaimed.". I mostly store Timespans, dates floats
and object references. I have little number strings.

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igrekel
Excellent news.

Since the standard way of working in GLASS is to persist sessions to the
stone, the 4GB limit was always a worry in case I get a big peak in traffic.

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mark_l_watson
Probably a smart move if it increases the market. Small nit: Seaside 3 has
been released, and it looks like they are only supporting 2.8 right now.

I am downloading the OS X install right now - something to play with while I
am on vacation next week.

~~~
pietrofmaggi
It seems that Seaside 3.0 is supported, from the GLASS wiki: "Seaside3.0 is
supported on GemStone/S 64 2.4.4.1 and older.":
<http://code.google.com/p/glassdb/wiki/Seaside30LoadOptions>

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pietrofmaggi
Here a good explanation by Avi Bryant of what is Gemstone Smalltalk:

<http://www.avibryant.com/2008/03/ive-had-a-numbe.html>

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marapril
Looking at those stats, they are going for mid sized corporations.

