Re: OPES protocol, pre-draft

On 19:26 18/03/03, Markus Hofmann said:
> jfcm wrote:
> > Notwidthstanding the document I do not understand yet what is an OPES and 
> > what is an OPES processor - and it seems that I am not alone. But I fully 
> > understand what is a dispatcher and what is a server.
Dear Markus,
I thank you for your response. It is my reading of the document. If the 
words probably render the thinking at a given time, I think they are 
inapropriate now. What they mean is that the OPES are not   located on the 
"OPES processor" but one of the "callout server". Also the OPES processor 
only supports the dispatcher and the i/o.
> The "data dispatcher" is part of the OPES processor (see Figure 1 and 
> corresponding text in the architecture draft). You might think of the OPES 
> processor as a physical box/network element, and about the data dispatcher 
> being a specific software component on this box. Note that "OPES 
> processor" does not refer to a "processor" in the sense of a processor 
> chip, but rather to the entire "box".
I do not see the dispatcher as a CPU, nor as a machine, but as a diagram 
corresponding to a set of filtering rules. With I/O the in being the input 
data, the O being the output to the user or to the servers or to other 
dispatchers. This can be implemented in different ways.
> A little bit simplified, you might think of having two different types of 
> boxes in the OPES architecture - the "OPES processor" and the "callout 
> server". The OPES processor includes a data dispatcher (that's simply a 
> functional component), which decides what services have to be executed on 
> what messages.
Taking advantage of this, you do understand.
- has the callout server a dispatcher as a front end (the callout protocol 
performing between disptchers) or not (the callout protocol performing 
beteween a dispatcher and a remote server). In the first case I understand 
how the sytem can be smart, in the later case I don't.
- what does the dispatcher do with the part of the traffic it does not send 
to the server and it received?
You see I do not feel at ease with the focus on the protocol before having 
a clear, terse and comon understanding of what it relates, under which 
constraints and with which mission.
jfc