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Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Rain from Intel Research: Continuation-based Distributed Messaging in Java

I'm looking through the javadocs for the Rain project from Intel Research. What might be of interest to the growing discussion about continuation-based web servers?

Here's what... Continuation.java

This class provides a mechanism to continue a computation after a reply to a message has arrived. This works by associating a continuation with an outbound message using the associate method. When a reply to this message arrives, the service calls the invoke method on the continuation object. If the continuation was constructed with a timeout and a reply does not arrive within that time, the timeout method will be called. While this class is not abstract, it does very little of interest until either invoke , timeout or both are overridden.

By default, continuations are "single shot". This means that once a reply has been received, the continuation is removed from the continuation system. To create a continuation that can be invoked by multiple replies to a message, call setMultiShot with true. (Multi-shot continuations are useful in situations where multiple replies may come back for a single sent message.) Note that a multi-shot continuation with no timeout won't ever expire, so do not forget to remove them with the delete method.

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Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.