GLASS is now free up to 16 GB and 2 CPU (formerly $7000/year)

http://seaside.gemstone.com/docs/GLASS-Announcement.htm

by pietrofmaggi • 16 years ago

28 12 16 years ago

seaside.gemstone.com

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...) put together GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, Smalltalk) as a service for Seaside deployment.

limmeau2• 16 years ago

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

igrekel4• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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?

limmeau2• 16 years ago

Just curious: How much memory does your system use in practice?

igrekel4• 16 years ago

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.

marapril• 16 years ago

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

mark_l_watson• 16 years ago

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.

pietrofmaggi3• 16 years ago

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

pietrofmaggi3• 16 years ago

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

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

GLASS is now free up to 16 GB and 2 CPU (formerly $7000/year)

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