Programming the web with high-level programming languages

Abstract

Many modern programs provide operating system-style ser- vices to extension modules. A Web server, for instance, behaves like a simple OS kernel. It invokes programs that dynamically generate Web pages and manages their resource consumption. Most Web servers, how- ever, rely on conventional operating systems to provide these services. As a result, the solutions are inefficient, and impose a serious overhead on the programmer of dynamic extensions. In this paper, we show that a Web server implemented in a suitably ex- tended high-level programming language overcomes all these problems. First, building a server in such a language is straightforward. Second, the server delivers static content at performance levels comparable to a conventional server. Third, the Web server delivers dynamic content at a much higher rate than a conventional server, which is important be- cause a significant portion of Web content is now dynamically generated. Finally, the server provides programming mechanisms for the dynamic generation of Web content that are difficult to support in a conventional server architecture.