Related Patterns

The Observer pattern relates to the other two event patterns documented within this book: the Event Monitor pattern and the Publish/Subscribe pattern. There are also mechanisms to ease some of the problems identified in this chapter, such as the need for a client to deploy a full Web Service environment. The following patterns relate to the Observer pattern:

Event Monitor: Clients use the Event Monitor pattern when there is no discernable event notification mechanism available on a target Web Service or when the available mechanism does not adequately fit the needs of the client.

Publish/Subscribe: The Publish/Subscribe pattern is an evolution of the Observer pattern. Whereas the Observer pattern relies on registration directly with a particular Web Service, the Publish/Subscribe pattern decouples the service that delivers notifications from the service that receives notification. This allows multiple services to send the same notification; it also abstracts the responsibility for event delivery and subscriber registration to a common class.

Faux Implementation: The Observer and Publish/Subscribe patterns are predicated on having a Web Service implemented by the client set up to receive event notifications. This is a heavy burden to place on potentially resource-constrained application environments. Fortunately, there are other lightweight mechanisms for registering and receiving event notifications that make it appear as if you have deployed a full Web Service environment.

Physical Tiers: The Observer pattern and the Publish/Subscribe pattern, as presented, do not plug into a stand-alone application. This is obviously a problem because the usefulness of the pattern implementations is limited. The Faux Implementation pattern indirectly addresses the problem because the listener becomes a part of the primary program. On the other hand, there are environments where self-encapsulated Web Services are best for observing event notifications. For these environments, physical tiers show how to connect the Web Service to one or more outside applications.