Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!torn!nott!cunews!palepu
From: palepu@scs.carleton.ca (Ravi Palepu)
Subject: Design Question (Client/Server/Sockets)
Message-ID: <D100s4.M4G@cunews.carleton.ca>
Sender: news@cunews.carleton.ca (News Administrator)
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 1994 08:55:15 GMT
Lines: 34

Hi,

As a course project/(visit to purgatory),
I'm working on a multi-user ST(80) mechanism that allows locks/commits/updates
on classes (and hopefully finer granularity)..

The communication mechanism is implemented with unix sockets.

Now I'd like to know if my communication subsystem
design is just too weird (its about 3:30 am
and I'm designing on the fly  (ran out of index cards (CRC) ;-) ).

Basically I have a UDP server that receives clients' initial messages and
registers them ( clients). I use UDP because it was designed for this
kind of N to 1 communication.

Upon registering, I create a IP connection from the server  to the client 
(which sticks around).

This IP connection will serve for the needed 2-way stream communication .
clients---(commit/lock/data messages) --> server ---( inform )-->other_clients
I use IP in order to simply send streams of data (new versions of
classes) to the clients....

I have a intuitive ill-feeling that my special server for registering
clients is not 'pretty'.

So what do you think, is there a more elegant solution (that someone
who is awake would have dreamt up)? Email me if you'd like to comment.

Thanks,
Rp

Happy Holidays ( polite-cally correct greeting ;-) )
