Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Asynchronous RPC

Author:Farzad Pezeshkpour
Posted:1/26/1999; 7:54:59 AM
Topic:Search Engine XML-RPC Interface
Msg #:2480 (In response to 2465)
Prev/Next:2479 / 2481

Eaton Messner wrote: The XML-RPC specification is silent on the issue of synchronous vs. asynchronous calls. Client software can choose to present either calling mechanism.

The question is, do any of the client software packages present an asynchronous calling mechanism?

some terms: sRPC == sync RPC aRPC == async RPC XML-RPC explicitly requires a return packet to confirm the invocation. Your explanation suggests: . the server is aware of the a/synch nature of its procedure . provides an XML-RPC response packet before the call is actually evaluated. . That the a/sync nature of the server procedure is immutable.

I think this complicates the design of the server and constrains its potential uses. IMO a client ought to be capable of asking the XML-RPC mechanism for a function call to be treated essentially as a message, with an optional callback when completed.

This made life easier when building our system. One complication was the invocation of a sRPC on a server with outstanding aRPCs from the given client. I decided that the sRPC should wait for all outstanding aRPCs to complete, before being evaluated. I understand that this may be a bit complicated, but for our systems design, it was a comfortable decision. Any thoughts?




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