[Ace-users] [ace-users] Need Suggestion for building a distributed platform based on ACE

[Douglas C. Schmidt]

Hi,

>My project need a lightweight distributed platform. TAO is just too
>big and complicated for us.

TAO is actually quite straightforward to learn.  You don't need to
understand all of it in order to use the key parts.  Moreover, there's
plenty of good documentation available on how to use it since it's
based on the CORBA standard.  I suspect that by the time you build
your own distributed platform it will be at least as complicated to
use as TAO!

>I am new to ACE, and i have a basic idea of how to build my platform
>on ACE but just need some suggestion from you to make sure that if it
>is possible to build such a platform.

>Basic idea of our platform is like below:
>. Dynamic configurable service and partition. same service maybe run
>on different server with different partition.  every service will register its host and
>port on a NET_LOCAL naming
> service. then the client that use these services can locate them by
>query the naming service.
>does it possible?  or ACE already provide utility to register and
>locate service dynamically.

Yes, ACE does provide this capability via its Naming Service, which is
available in ACE_ROOT/netsvcs/.  Note, however, that it's easier and
more standard to do this with TAO's Naming Service.

>. RMI/serialize. The client will use RMI to communicate with service.
>does ACE provide a
>  RMI interface or any basic component that i can use to build a RMI ?

Yes - it's called "The ACE ORB" (TAO)..  You could always build up
your own RMI capabilities using the same ACE frameworks and wrapper
facade classes that TAO uses.  If you go this route I recommend you
check out the material in the POSA2 and POSA4 books
<www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/POSA>, as well as the ACE C++NP books
<www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE/>.

>. Message queue/Channel: also i need a persistent channel to store the
>data. i know
>ACE provide message queue lib. but it seems it is not persistent.
>any suggestion?

TAO provides an implementation of the CORBA Persistent State Service
(PSS), which you might want to check out.

Thanks,

        Doug
-- 
Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt                       Professor and Associate Chair
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science  TEL: (615) 343-8197
Vanderbilt University                        WEB: www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt
Nashville, TN 37203                          NET: d.schmidt at vanderbilt.edu