[Tile-serving] New option for tile server: Nginx+Tirex

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 05/23/2013 05:53 PM, Kai Krueger wrote:
> What's the advantage of talking to tirex directly, compared to using the
> mod-tile socket emulation? What should mod_tile be able to do, that it
> currently can't with the emulation layer?

One thing I always wanted to have is better control over render 
priorities - i.e. having more than the 4 or 5 hard-coded priority values 
in renderd. Apart from that, the Tirex protocol allows not only the 
enqueuing but also the dequeuing of tiles (e.g. if the module decides 
that it takes too long to render), and more precise return messages.

I also find UDP (which Tirex uses) a more elegant solution than using a 
streaming socket for what *is* essentially a datagram protocol but I 
guess that's a design choice.

> If the tirex protocol already provides those features, then it likely
> wouldn't be difficult to extend mod_tile to support that as well (you
> don't need to write a whole new module to add a feature... ;-)) Mod_tile
> already supports using either unix domain sockets or TCP/IP sockets to
> connect to the rendering backend.

To be quite honest, I find that mod_tile starts to support too many 
features for my personal use. That was one of the reasons I was toying 
with a lean mod_tirex. I don't need pluggable backends, mime types, TCP 
connections to other rendering servers, and all that. I want a module 
that does less, but does it well, rather than add more and more optional 
functionality to mod_tile. I fear that even functionality that I do not 
use will reduce the overall stability of the module.

Maybe we need a module architecture for mod_tile ^^

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"