Im designing a c++ client application that listens to multiple ports for streams of short messages. After reading up on ACE, POCO, boost::asio and all the Proactor like design patterns, I am about to start with boost::asio.
One thing I notice it a constant theme of using Asynchronous socket IO, yet have not read a good problem description that async io solves. Are all these design patterns based on the assumption of HTTP web server design?
Since web servers are the most common application for complex latency sensitive concurrent socket programming, im starting to wonder if most of these patterns/idioms are geared for this one application.
My application will listen to a handful of sockets for short and frequent messages. A separate thread will need to combine all messages for processing. One thing that I am looking at design patterns for, is separating the connection management from the data processing. I wish to have the connections to try reconnect after a disconnect and have the processing thread continue as if nothing happened. What design pattern is recommended here?
I dont see how async io will improve performance in my case.
You’re on the right track. It’s smart to ask “why” especially with all the hype around asynchronous and event driven. There are applications other than the web. Consider message queues and financial transactions like high frequency trading. Basically any time that waiting costs money or loses an opportunity to serve a customer is a candidate for async. The web is a big example because the network is so much faster than the database. As always, ask “does this make sense” for your app. Async adds a lot of complexity if you’re not benefiting from it.
Your short, rapid messages may actually benefit a lot from async if the mean time between messages is comparable to the time required to process each message, especially if that processing includes persistence. But you don’t have to rush into async. Instrument your blocking code and see whether you really have a bottleneck.
I hope this helps.