Re: ADA client/server

["Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@acm.org>]

Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> Then again, "forking", "multiple processes" or "tasks" are not
> a required part of a "client/server" design.  In some applications
> a "single server queue" is adequate.  In some operating systems
> the effect of a "multiple server queue" can be achieved without
> "forking", "multiple processes" or "tasks".  It may not be your
> chosen design technique, but it certainly makes it "possible to
> build a client/server" program in Ada.

Well, for that matter, you could build a client/server program in just
about any language. All it requires is the ability of one program to
request services from another program and get back results. You can
manually fire up both programs and as long as a communication path is
available - voila! - you've got client/server.

I'd suspect the original questioner ("jill" <jlgoh43@ >) had in mind
some means by which she could write code that would initiate another
program from within Ada. I don't think that a fork is the most natural
way in Ada to do that since there is no "fork" language feature. Using
OS calls gets the job done, but it depends on exactly what is the job.
If there's no requirement to run the client and server on two separate
machines and the only goal is to achieve some degree of parallelism,
then maybe tasks are the better approach? Otherwise, one would be
looking at compiler specific libraries or OS calls to initiate the
server.

MDC
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