What's the intention of opencpu.org compared to other approaches?

Question

Lately I was pointed to http://opencpu.org/ . Nifty website, but after browsing for a little while I wasn't so sure where it is located in the R landscape compared to e.g. rApache or RPy2.

After waiting a long time for the server to come back I was finally able to read the architecture section, but that wasn't too comprehensive. I'm looking for a more detailed explanation of what OpenCPU is, how it is intended to be used, and how this compares with existing tools such as rApache and RPy2.

Thereabouts

Interesting, but I'm not sure what the question is here, so I've had to vote to close – Polished

Can your question be rephrased as: "How does opencpu.org compare to rApache or Rstudio server?" If so, then please do so. As-is it is a little hard to answer definitively. Waggishly, I'd say it fits into the Westwood area of the R landscape. – Adamik

I made an attempt to focus the question a bit towards something less likely to attract close votes. I hope I still captured the spirit of what you're asking. – Neurophysiology

I like joran's edit and I hope I´d rather will extract answers then close votes. @Iterator: I did not want to name specific technology in the header because I did not want to limit it. Your comment shows that I was right about that, since I did not even think about RStudio Server. Good point though. Maybe, "What's the intention of opencpu.org as opposed to other comparable technologies..?" would do better – i'll try that. – Thereabouts

Answer 1

In a nutshell: OpenCPU is a layer on top of the regular tools (e.g. RApache, rpy2) that defines a framework and protocol for interacting with R. It handles stuff like object serialization, security, resource control, reproducibility etc, while abstracting away technicalities.

This paper on arxiv goes into more detail on the motivation and design of the system and API.

Stump