[Spread-users] Spread for Component oriented event-based systems

[Ned Konz]

On Friday 16 January 2004 2:24 pm, Ryan Caudy wrote:
> > * I am using CORBA events for my stuff. How can Spread be a better
> > option instead of CORBA in this case ?
>
> I'm not very familiar with CORBA events.  Maybe someone else on the list
> is.  Spread does provide an event-handling system to handle timed events
> and activity on sockets, which is used internally by Spread, but can
> also be used by client applications.  Because Spread connections
> (mbox's) are ordinary sockets, facilities like select() can be used
> directly.

From this description (found at http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/xgws/papers/
events_paper/node2.html)
---
CORBA Events

A CORBA [10] event channel is an intervening object that allows multiple 
suppliers to communicate with multiple consumers asynchronously. An event 
channel is both a consumer and a supplier of events. Event channels are 
standard CORBA objects and communication with an event channel is 
accomplished using standard CORBA requests. References to the event channel 
may be received from a naming service or from specific-to-task object 
protocol. CORBA supports a Naming service to locate listeners, and both a 
push and pull model. Event types are described using IDL, and the OMG 
specification describes mechanisms for load balancing and recovery. 
---

I would say that Spread:

* is a different kind of thing than CORBA (that is, there's no object model 
there, just an API for sending messages (bunches of bytes with some out of 
band information)).

* has only a "push" model (from the Spread point of view), unless you make it 
do something different. That is, every subscriber to a group hears messages 
to that group. So if you want to "pull" events, you have to "push" an event 
to some other listener (via some group) to get them to start pushing events 
to you.

But since Spread doesn't interpret the contents of messages, and since there's 
a 2-byte message type field that you can use, you can easily set up such a 
system with your own interpretation as to what "push" and "pull" means.

For instance, you could define a message type that says "could someone please 
tell me about..." and then any subscribers to that group could then reply 
(also to the group, or privately) with what they know. It's really quite 
flexible, and much lighter weight than CORBA.

* has only a "pull" model (from the client point of view), unless you hide it 
in some way. That is, each client must poll the mbox from time to time in 
order to get messages or find out if any are waiting. But since the mbox is a 
socket, it can be added to a select call easily.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE