Title:

Patterns for Efficient, Predictable, Scalable, and Flexible
Dispatching Components

Authors:

Irfan Pyarali (primary contact)
irfan@cs.wustl.edu

Washington University
Campus Box 1045
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, Missouri 63130-4899
Phone: (314) 935-7492

Carlos O'Ryan
coryan@uci.edu

Douglas C. Schmidt
schmidt@uci.edu

Abstract:

In an increasing number of application domains, dispatching components
are responsible for delivering upcalls to one or more application
objects when events or requests arrive in a system.  Implementing
efficient, predictable, and scalable dispatching components is hard
and implementing them for multi-threaded systems is even harder.  In
particular, dispatching components must be prepared to deliver upcalls
to multiple objects, to handle recursive requests originated from
application-provided upcalls, and often must collaborate with
applications to control object life-cycles.

In our distributed object computing (DOC) middleware research, we have
implemented many dispatching components that apply common solutions
repeatedly to solve the challenges outlined above.  Moreover, we have
discovered that the forces constraining dispatching components often
differ slightly, thereby requiring alternative solution strategies.
This paper presents two contributions to the design and implementation
of efficient, predictable, scalable, and flexible dispatching
components.  First, it shows how patterns can be applied to capture
key design and performance characteristics of proven dispatching
components.  Second, it presents a set of patterns that describe
successful solutions appropriate for key dispatching challenges
arising in various real-time DOC middleware and applications.}

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