Re: [boost] [rpc/marshal] prototype rpc / marshal library using asio and serialization (and futures in the future?)

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-04-29 17:46:49

Peter Dimov wrote:
> Jeff Garland wrote:
>> Peter Dimov wrote:
>>> Jeff Garland wrote:
>>>
>>>> But you've already fallen into the trap.  Just because the computers
>>>> are next to each other doesn't mean you are going to get an
>>>> immediate answer.  For example, one of the computers you are
>>>> communicating with might be really busy doing something (swapping
>>>> perhaps if it's overloaded).
>>> The same can (and does) happen with local calls if the computer is
>>> really busy or starts paging.
>> Right, but the programmer has no way of reasonably detecting and
>> handling that condition from within his program.  If it's on a remote
>> machine he can and should because it's a frequent issue with
>> networked programs.
> 
> Right, that was kind of my point. It's not a black and white issue, but 
> rather a question of frequency or probability. If you can tolerate the slim 
> chances of blocking, you can go with synchronous calls. The fact that it's a 
> different machine doesn't increase the chances that much; interprocess calls 
> to the same machine have a similar chance of blocking, except that you now 
> need half the load, all else being equal. Async is better but requires more 
> coding investment that may not be worth it, pragmatically speaking. 

 From my own experience (I have my own RMI/RPC framework), I can say 
that I agree with Peter. I have both sync and async calls and both are 
beneficial. It is usually a matter of context which one you use. For 
example I use sync calls during the connection process since in that 
context nothing else makes much sense. Almost everywhere else I use 
async calls.

-- 
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Redshift Software, Inc. - http://redshift-software.com
-- rrivera/acm.org - grafik/redshift-software.com
-- 102708583/icq - grafikrobot/aim - grafikrobot/yahoo