Re: Confluence status

[Joe Schaefer <jo...@mail.sunstarsys.com>]

[i'm not on dev@geronimo, so the moderator there will have to
push this thru]

David Blevins <da...@visi.com> writes:

> Replying primarily for the people on dev@geronimo.a.o.  Further
> replies should probably just go to infra@.  Someone correct me if I'm
> wrong. 
>
> On Feb 3, 2006, at 7:08 AM, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
>> To quote Atlassian: "Confluence will likely die if slashdotted, so  shouldn't
>> be used as a *primary* project website if slashdotting is likely."   Read
>> "slashdotting" as heavy load, and we experience sufficient load on  the Wiki
>> to make caching mandatory.
>
> IMHO, this quote comes out opposite as it was meant.
>
> On Feb 2, 2006, at 4:29 PM, Jeff Turner wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 11:56:44AM -0500, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
>>> Even Atlassian has recommended against Confluence as a Wiki in our
>>> enviroment at this time.
>>
>> Not quite; Confluence will likely die if slashdotted, so shouldn't be
>> used as a *primary* project website if slashdotting is likely.
>
> The distinction made is:
>
>   - Confluence as a wiki, Good
>   - Confluence as a live website, Bad

IIRC the technical requirements come from experience with the existing
moin-moin wiki, so that's probably the context best suited for Noel's 
remarks.

>
> There are ways to use the *content* create via Confluence in a  website.  A
> number of people have working solutions already.  Most  fall into one of or a
> mix of this:
>
>   1. Serving static pages that are generated whenever from content  in
> Confluence
>   2. Smart front-end generating and caching pages from Confluence

My concern is that people will be far less creative in how they manage
their content if there's an asf-endorsed wiki they can just point users
at.  IOW, are people doing similarly creative things with the moin-moin
wiki, or do they normally just refer folks directly to the content on the 
"apache wiki"?

> I think we are in good shape sans the fact that we should have our  own
> confluence install.

We'd be in better shape if we could just get confluence to perform as
well as moin-moin, so policing people's usage would be less of a concern.
When it comes to options, the issue of failure recovery is important.
What happens if the box dies; does the content die with it?  What will
happen to the projects dependent on an asf confluence if the technical
support for it (which is a perpetual committment) diminishes over time?

-- 
Joe Schaefer

Re: Confluence status

[Jeff Turner <je...@apache.org>]

On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 04:50:13AM -0500, Joe Schaefer wrote:
...
> IIRC the technical requirements come from experience with the existing
> moin-moin wiki, so that's probably the context best suited for Noel's 
> remarks.

Yes, and I think it's a fair approach to take.

Here's how I see things going forward..

1) Towards Confluence as a direct MoinMoin alternative

Infrastructure@ want some decent benchmarks demonstrating that Confluence
can survive sustained heavy load (ala MoinMoin) and/or spikes (slashdot).
Noel rightly says caching is essential. Briefly experimenting with 'ab -c
100 -n 1000' suggests that Confluence's internal caching may be enough.
I'll ask the Confluence team if they can produce some benchmarks.

2) Confluence as doc staging/development environment

There are various ways to suck content from Confluence to a live site:

 - Maven has Doxia in development.
 - Codehaus have a Perl script (Confluenza) which sucks down content via
   XML-RPC to build their website.
 - Pier is working on a Confluence plugin that saves static HTML.
 - Anyone can rig up a script using Confluence's XML-RPC/SOAP API.

Confluence does not have to be running on ASF hardware for its use as a
doc staging environment. Some projects might use the Codehaus Confluence,
some use http://opensource2.atlassian.com/confluence/oss/. It would be
nice if the ASF had an internal Confluence installation for doc staging,
and that's what I proposed Atlassian would sponsor a box (partly) for.


--Jeff

> -- 
> Joe Schaefer