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Re: [xmlblaster] Design Questioin

Rob McDonald wrote: 
I am still trying to pile through xmlblaster to determine all that it
can do, so I apologize if this is a stupid series of questions.

I am working on an application that consists of three components: a
client, a management server, and a audit server. The clients are used
to log in(to the management server) with various access levels to
schedule events, download completed audits, add users, etc. The
Management server is used to process client requests, accept new
audits/commands from the clients, distribute commands/audits evenly to
the audit servers, and report responses. The audit server, accepts
commands, performs actions, and reports results.
Hi Rob,

are the audit servers identical - they are just for load balancing / redundant fail over?
In this case the consumable queue plugin is for you, see
http://www.xmlblaster.org/xmlBlaster/doc/requirements/msgDistributor.plugin.ConsumableQueue.html

If each audit server is specialized on different tasks the above is not useful.

The general setup could be:

A) Startup:

1. On startup each audit server subscribes persistently on a topic
  "com.resurgent-tech.auditserver.request.<myAuditServerName>",
 for example the 'accounting' audit server subscribes on:
  "com.resurgent-tech.auditserver.request.accounting"
  which will deliver the requests coming from the service manager.
  For load balancing (if you have multiple 'accounting' audit servers)
  the subscribe could configure the consumable queue plugin.

2. On startup all audit servers publish themselves persistently (prio=HIGH, no PtP) to separate topics
"com.resurgent-tech.registration.auditserver.<myAuditServerName>",
probably with information what they are capable to do.
Example: "com.resurgent-tech.registration.auditserver.accounting"

3. The service manager subscribes on 'startswith(com.resurgent-tech.registration.auditserver.)'
so he knows about the available audit servers (XPath subscription).

4. The service manager subscribes persistently on topic "com.resurgent-tech.manager.request"
which is used to receive requests from clients.

Note: All audit services and the service manager should login fail save with a positive session id
like loginName="servicemanager/session/1" or "accounting/session/1"
and "-dispatch/connection/retries -1" and
a big enough callback queue. They should use persistent subscribes to never loose any message.



B) Operation:


1. Clients publish transient requests (with a reasonable expiration time) to "com.resurgent-tech.manager.request"

2. The service manager processes the request and forwards the task to one of the audit servers using
a topic like "com.resurgent-tech.auditserver.request.accounting".
He adds a client property with the clients address (for example 'joe/session/-12')
which is bounced back by the audit servers when sending their responses to the service manager.
Like this the service manager knows for whom the response is, and remains stateless which reduces complexity.

3. The service manager receives the response, does some additional value enhancement (if needed)
and sends a transient PtP response message to the client (with a reasonable expiration time).
You could choose a response topic "com.resurgent-tech.client.response.joe"
to avoid creating/destroying many temporary topics (for the PtP messages).

There can be many variations of the above scenario, depending on your setup and demands,
for example the client could choose to not receive the responses asynchronously - by using the
request/response pattern (thus blocking in the request until the response arrives).

enjoy
Marcel

Now, my question is really with respect to the management server.

I wish to "send" commands to the management server to be destined for
the audit servers, however, I want the management server to apply some
"logic" as to which audit server gets the action request.  So, finally
to my question:

Should I publish a "management" channel via the management server from
which clients can issue commands, and then request point to point
channels to the servers so I can poll information and send specific
commands to each based on my "logic"(I need two way comm between my
audit servers and the management server, however, I don't necessarily
need broadcast capabilities, only point to point).

I hope this email is not too "abstract" to get my general design
question across, if it is, let me know and I will apply more detail.

Thank You,
Rob