[Opensim-dev] Thoughts on Scripting

[Mike Deem]

Perhaps scripts should be responsible for explicitly storing and fetching
state as needed. That is how the vast majority of programming environments
work. There is usually no expectation that a running program's state is
preserved at all times.

A simple get/put property bag API could be provided by the platform. Such an
API could be backed by a local DB, an assert server, or even a cloud store
like Amazon S3 or something.

External script servers may also make load balancing easier. A single srever
could handle scripts in multiple regions, or a single reagion's scripts
could be spread across multiple script servers. Also, moving all script
HTTP, e-mail, and RPC I/O to a different machine could help balance network
load.

  == Mike ==


On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:30 PM, Dahlia Trimble <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm not sure I agree, periodic state backups could preserve quite a bit of
> information, and machines hosting simulators can fail just as a machine
> hosting a script server. Not sure I agree with the delays either as the
> script server may even be able to do things faster since it may only have
> script processing to do and doesn't have to spend time processing physics or
> whatnot. If it was able to communicate all the changes that needed to happen
> in a server frame before the next frame starts then it may actually be a
> faster design. I guess a lot depends on how it's implemented.
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 4:32 AM, J Ross Nicoll <
> jrn2005 at cs.st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> The problem with an external script server is you're still doomed if
>> the server goes down. You need to be able to serialise state anyway or
>> the first extended powercut/hardware fault/intern looking for a kettle
>> lead will cause unspeakable chaos.
>>
>> You'd also be bringing in even more delay in script response time, but
>> that's relatively minor.
>>
>> On 7 Sep 2008, at 15:52, Mike Deem wrote:
>>
>> > I've also been thinking about things like global scripts and
>> > external script servers. External script servers would solve some of
>> > the script state serialization issues. Instead of moving a running
>> > script from one region to another, it just keeps running on it's
>> > server.
>>
>> The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland : No
>> SC013532
>>
>>
>>
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