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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] RFC: arch protocol, smart server, and tla implement


From: Andrew Suffield
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] RFC: arch protocol, smart server, and tla implementation prototypes
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:14:12 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 06:52:46PM -0500, Miles Bader wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 06:34:55PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> > First, "why a smart server?".  This has been discussed on the mailing
> > list in the past, but here's a far-from-exhaustive list of reasons:
> 
> BTW, another thing which I think is important is to reduce latency problems
> where possible -- current arch remote access methods are _extremely_
> latency-bound (it's amazing, even on my butt-slow dialup, arch can only
> manage to use about 10% of the bandwidth!).
> 
> That is, try to (1) chunk things up (send/get lists of things rather than
> one thing at a time),

This could happen already, and doesn't pretty much because tla
sucks. Not likely to change soon, so get used to it.

> (2) design your protocols so they can be streamed
> (instead of a series of short operation-replies, allow a bunch of operations
> to be sent as a batch, with well-defined behavior in the case of mid-batch
> failure).

This is easy; most command-response protocols like http and this one
are simple to pipeline.

This would do well enough:

Commands may be pipelined, in that multiple commands can be
transmitted before the responses to any have been received. The server
will respond to every command independently; if any command fails,
subsequent commands will be processed regardless.

Transactions may be created with 'BEGIN' and 'END' commands. The sole
property of transactions is that after a BEGIN, if any command results
in an error then all further commands will be skipped until the next
END. Transactions may be nested.

That provides everything you could conceivably want for tla in its
current form (don't try to future-proof transaction systems; it never
works. Redesign them later).

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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