C++ Network Programming, Volume 1: Mastering Complexity with ACE and Patterns

Chapter 5. Concurrency Design Dimensions

Chapter Synopsis

Concurrency is essential to develop scalable and robust networked applications, particularly servers. This chapter presents a domain analysis of concurrency design dimensions that address the policies and mechanisms governing the proper use of processes, threads, and synchronizers. We cover the following design dimensions in this chapter:

• Iterative versus concurrent versus reactive servers

• Processes versus threads

• Process/thread spawning strategies

• User versus kernel versus hybrid threading models

• Time-shared versus real-time scheduling classes

• Task- versus message-based architectures

5.1 Iterative, Concurrent, and Reactive Servers

Servers can be categorized as either iterative, ...