The event-driven model of Node.js is supposed to be beneficial for resolving the C10K issue. It's been a long time since this site is up. I haven't encountered any problems yet. The traffic is still very low I presume no one is gonna know how awesome ( probably not ) the way my site was built. So last week I did a stress test with the ab command.

Result:

The result has proven that my site is shit.

BotanJS API Blockage

The problem causing the request to wait was mainly because Rosemary was waiting for the Service API to return the corresponding js/css.

Js/CSS are mostly considered static, as long as the source haven't changed. It should be delivered quickly without any problem.

However, because of the nature of BotanJs. it compiles these resources on the fly and the API call is done via http internally ( http://localhost:5000/ ). Shit, I've just created a problem that shouldn't be a problem!

Welp, I guess I need a way to cache the resources acquisition mappings. They probably wouldn't change if the content stays the same. ( That depends on what components I need for writing each blog entry. As the BotanJs is going to minimize the size of the compiled source to extreme, 90%¹ of the style / script will be call / used on that page. ) 

An Organic Approach

After some struggling, I have listed some possible approach I could think of:
1. Compile everything into one single, big, all-purpose js/css file. Serve them on every page ( General approach )
2. Compile the scripts in Rosemary, eliminating the *calling layer*
3. Use a cached map to lookup the corresponding file

Most of the site goes for Solution 1 because it is easier to manage and reliable. And because of that js/css is already in their computer after the first load. The next page they visit will be rendering faster because the only resource the browser need to get is the page itself.

I'd say FUCK THAT. Most people stumble upon my blog are just one-time visitor. So every single page should be optimized and should be equally fast even for first load. I hate jquery because many people are using then like whatever and punch in those empty calls². Using this approach just violates the policy of BotanJs. The goal of BotanJs is to eliminate ( or minimize, at least ) those useless crap when it is not needed.

The only way Rosemary can tell if the resource is up to date is by asking the Service API. But asking it every time does no good. So to reduce the overhead. I have to ask in a way that it will not make the request to wait.

Solution 2 is not practical because the compiling / resolving process costs time and probably won't do much comparing to the http overhead. But it could be done via Node.js.
 
So I go for Solution 3. By setting a timeout for the Service calling, it will instead look for the file compiled last time and use it after the timeout occurred.

Deployment issue

To ensure the content delivery is always the latest. I have to make sure the old content should not be delivered after the source has been updated. This could be achieved by clearing the cached mappings after deployment.

That's why I call this organic - when the number of client increases, the server become *rash* and try to deliver contents as fast as possible. So it ain't have time to wait for that Service call to return.

This was essentially the same concept I used in implementing the lastlog - with the cooldown approach.

( A day later )

Now, let's see the results:

Aaaaand it is still shit. But from the log I could see that the overhead of API calling is solved.

Next stop, profiling!