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Server architecture? [message #580746] Tue, 29 March 2005 17:05 Go to next message
Bryan Hunt is currently offline Bryan HuntFriend
Messages: 366
Registered: July 2009
Senior Member
I was looking a bit at ECF and noticed that you are using a server (for
at least the chat part). Do you have any docs on the server
architecture? I was thinking that a server based on maybe the rich
client platform or maybe J2EE could be very interesting.

Bryan
Re: Server architecture? [message #580787 is a reply to message #580746] Sun, 03 April 2005 01:19 Go to previous message
Scott Lewis is currently offline Scott LewisFriend
Messages: 1038
Registered: July 2009
Senior Member
Hi Bryan,

We currently have two provider implementations for ECF:

1) a 'generic' reference implementation (in org.eclipse.ecf.provider
plugin, incidently)
2) XMPP (in org.eclipse.ecf.provider.xmpp). This one uses the Jive
Smack API to communicate with an XMPP server

We will soon be working on one based upon a JMS implementation (and some
others). We're not yet sure which JMS implementation we will be using,
however.

So, as for the server architecture...the server architecture will, of
course, be specific to the provider implementation. For the reference
implementation there is a trivial server implemented in the
org.eclipse.ecf.provider plugin, with class:
org.eclipse.ecf.provider.app.ServerApplication.

In this class you will see that the application creates an instance of a
'TCPServerContainer' and it does all the work. This is an ECF shared
object container implementation that serves as a server (based upon just
raw TCP communication). This TCPServerContainer implementation does all
the work of the server...which is, basically, to be a container for
shared object instances (like all the client container instances), but
to also do message fan out, group authentication, and provide other
group management functions. If you look at the TCPServerContainer type
hierarchy you will see the following class structure:

SOContainer
\
ServerSOContainer
\
TCPServerSOContainer

The SOContainer class is an abstract and 'topology independent'
container implementation. Note that the ClientSOContainer is a direct
subclass of SOContainer also. We will also likely use the SOContainer
class as a superclass for container implementations that are based upon
peer-to-peer protocols as well...e.g. JavaGroups, others, etc.

Of course, you and anyone are completely free to use/reuse/inherit from
this code to build custom server implementations...or replace all of it
with your own implementation of ISharedObjectContainer (the core
required container interface).

Note also that the org.eclipse.ecf.provider plugin makes the
TCPServerContainer available via the SharedObjectContainerFactory, so
that the following will create an instance of a TCPServerContainer:

ISharedObjectContainer servercontainer =
SharedObjectContainerFactory.makeSharedObjectContainer("org.eclipse.ecf.provider.generic.Server ");

Applications can therefore create/start/run servers from within Eclipse
as well. If you are curious about this, see the declaration within the
org.eclipse.ecf.provider/plugin.xml that starts like this:

<extension
point="org.eclipse.ecf.containerFactory">
<containerFactory
class="org.eclipse.ecf.provider.generic.ContainerInstantiator "
description="Generic Server Container Instantiator"
name="org.eclipse.ecf.provider.generic.Server">


One more point about the code in org.eclipse.ecf.provider (and
org.eclipse.ecf): They don't have any dependency on Eclipse...*their
only runtime dependency is on Java 1.4+ and OSGI 3.0*. This makes them
potentially useful for the development of a more complete server
implementation without requiring Eclipse itself. Our intention is to
keep the ECF core codebase that way...to have the use of the ECF
interfaces (org.eclipse.ecf plugin) and the generic provider
implementation (org.eclipse.ecf.provider) *only* depend upon java and
OSGI 3.0 so as to support provider implementations from a variety of
sources (commercial and/or open source), without the need for non-OSGI
Eclipse code on the server...indeed without the need even for java on a
server, etc.

We are working on further docs...we'll do our best to produce them
quickly. Hopefully this will help get things going for you though.
Please let us know if you wish to implement your own new ECF provider
with your own server. We will happily help.

Scott


Bryan Hunt wrote:
> I was looking a bit at ECF and noticed that you are using a server (for
> at least the chat part). Do you have any docs on the server
> architecture? I was thinking that a server based on maybe the rich
> client platform or maybe J2EE could be very interesting.
>
> Bryan
>
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