I believe the potential of Mongrel2 lies in real-time web applications.
Want to write a backend in PHP for a real-time chat? That is very difficult with Apache and mod_php. With Mongrel2 and ZeroMQ, it is almost trivial.
Mongrel2's asynchronous pub/sub networking paradigm opens up possibilities for real-time communication to browsers. When websockets get real, Mongrel2 may very well be the way we all start using them.
Where Mongrel2 has some ground to cover is handling traditional server-generated pages. Want to run an existing PHP application with a framework like CodeIgniter? You can't do it from Mongrel2 without proxying to nginx or apache (yet). Hopefully this is something that will come along in Mongrel2 v2.0.
Want to write a backend in PHP for a real-time chat? That is very difficult with Apache and mod_php. With Mongrel2 and ZeroMQ, it is almost trivial.
Mongrel2's asynchronous pub/sub networking paradigm opens up possibilities for real-time communication to browsers. When websockets get real, Mongrel2 may very well be the way we all start using them.
Where Mongrel2 has some ground to cover is handling traditional server-generated pages. Want to run an existing PHP application with a framework like CodeIgniter? You can't do it from Mongrel2 without proxying to nginx or apache (yet). Hopefully this is something that will come along in Mongrel2 v2.0.