I'm having a hard time understanding the big picture of GemStone for Smalltalk. I am aware of GLASS as an application server using Linux, Seaside and Apache. But I want to know if it is an usable environment for non-Seaside applications.
I'm also having trouble to finding some basic questions:
It is not clear to me if GLASS or GemStone/S is independent of the VM used. For example if I'm using a VM which supports black threads, does that mean that the GemStone/S will work transparently?
For what I've seen also it is not useful for 3D applications. For example, if my application developed in Pharo or VisualWorks uses OpenGL, may I consider GemStone/S for scaling up?
I've read that you may have objects in VisualWorks and objects in GemStone/S, but this confuses me a lot. How do I know if the object I've just created it is already persisted or in "client" side? In which case I need GemBuilder?