Re: New word to replace "serverless"

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful
tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor
less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean
so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -
that's all."

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass


On 28/01/2020 09:18, Richard Hipp wrote:
> For many years I have described SQLite as being "serverless", as a way
> to distinguish it from the more traditional client/server design of
> RDBMSes.  "Serverless" seemed like the natural term to use, as it
> seems to mean "without a server".
> 
> But more recently, "serverless" has become a popular buzz-word that
> means "managed by my hosting provider rather than by me."  Many
> readers have internalized this new marketing-driven meaning for
> "serverless" and are hence confused when they see my claim that
> "SQLite is serverless".
> 
> How can I fix this?  What alternative word can I use in place of
> "serverless" to mean "without a server"?
> 
> Note that "in-process" and "embedded" are not adequate substitutes for
> "serverless".  An RDBMS might be in-process or embedded but still be
> running a server in a separate thread. In fact, that is how most
> embedded RDBMSes other than SQLite work, if I am not much mistaken.
> 
> When I say "serverless" I mean that the application invokes a
> function, that function performs some task on behalf of the
> application, then the function returns, *and that is all*.  No threads
> are left over, running in the background to do housekeeping.  The
> function does send messages to some other thread or process.  The
> function does not have an event loop.  The function does not have its
> own stack. The function (with its subfunctions) does all the work
> itself, using the callers stack, then returns control to the caller.
> 
> So what do I call this, if I can no longer use the word "serverless"
> without confusing people?
> 
> "no-server"?
> "sans-server"?
> "stackless"?
> "non-client/server"?
> 
> 

-- 
Regards
    John McMahon
       [email protected]

When people say "The climate has changed before,"
these are the kinds of changes they're talking about.
https://xkcd.com/1732/

_______________________________________________
sqlite-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailinglists.sqlite.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users