Hi, I am looking for some recommendations for client/server technologies and for the communication involved.
I am currently planning to port a Perl application that has grown out of proportion to another language and architecture. For this purpose, I am investigating technologies that best fit the requirements. The current plan for the architecture of the ported software includes: - A client/server model, where the server provides a service for configuring network devices and the client provides a user interface that runs on Unix. - Java (and possibly Jython) or Mono/C# (or possibly IronPython) on the server. Requirements are: A strong and fair threading model. This is actually what drove me away from Perl and what essentially prevents using a normal Python interpreter on the server. I don't know whether the GIL and starvation issues also apply to IronPython or Jython. Sharing non thread-aware objects of arbitrary type between threads without any restriction is absolutely necessary (this is not possible in Perl). - Perl or Python on the client side. Clients have to provide a UI (a web application is not an option). Unfortunately, I have very little experience with client/server architectures and the protocols involved, so I would like to collect your recommendations as a starting point for further research: - Are there any standard protocols that make it easy to share objects between Java/Jython/IronPython and Python or Perl over the network? I am thinking of a portable, language independent object (de-)serialization, if such a thing exists. Having a defined protocol/interface between the client and the server that makes it easy to switch technologies on either side of the architecture is a strong requirement. - How does bi-directional communication in such a protocol work? I am assuming that the client should not poll the server for callbacks, OTOH, leaving a TCP connection open also does not seem right. - What is the security model of that protocol? If my description of the project is inaccurate or too incomplete I apologize; the problem is that I still find it hard to tell which requirements actually matter. If you have any pointers that might be of interest for such an architecture, please let me know. -Samuel -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
