Chapter 2. Service and Configuration Design Dimensions

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C HAPTER S YNOPSIS

A service is a set of functionality offered to a client by a server. Common services available on the Internet today include

• Web content retrieval services, such as Apache and Google

• Software distribution services, such as Castanet, Citrix, or Softricity

• Electronic mail and network news transfer services

• File access on remote machines

• Network time synchronization

• Payment processing services

• Streaming audio/video services, such as RealPlayer and QuickTime

Networked applications can be created by configuring their constituent services together at various points of time, such as compile time, static link time, installation time, or run time.

Chapters 1 and 5 of C++NPv1 provided a domain analysis of the communication protocols and mechanisms and the concurrency architectures used by networked applications. This chapter expands that coverage to analyze other design dimensions that address key networked application properties. These properties include service duration and structure, how networked services are identified, and the time at which they are bound together to form complete applications. These design dimensions are important in any networked application, and of particular importance to the ACE Service Configurator framework (Chapter 5). If you're already familiar with these design dimensions, however, you may want to skip ahead to Chapter 3, which begins the coverage of the ACE frameworks.

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