I guess the obvious question is: what does this offer that you don't get from connect/express?
The main advantages/differences over Connect/Express at this point are:
- Patterned after WSGI/Rack. This implies some significant differences in the API.
- Built on node 0.4; takes full advantage of streams.
- Built-in support for streaming multipart parsing/file uploading (uses node-formidable's parser).
- Built-in support for gzip encoding, URL rewriting, and URL mapping.
- RFC-compliant support for content negotiation using the Accept, Accept-Language, Accept-Encoding, and Accept-Charset HTTP headers.
- A specification with middleware to enforce it.tjholowaychuk has done extensive testing/benchmarking of Connect/Express. I'd really like to see some benchmarks and code coverage.
Strata gives you a sane environment modeled after the WSGI/Rack/CGI model, which has been the backbone of web servers for years.
Also, Strata's API matches the WSGI/Rack model. This may seem small, but in practice it's a significant benefit.
Add to that the list of features cited in the release email, including native support for streams in node 0.4.