Re: [beep4j-user] Concurrency issues

[Sam R. <sro...@wu...>]

On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 10:02:29PM -0700, Thomson, Martin wrote:
> There is no protocol reason for preventing out of order messages.  I can
> also prove that with a small change, beep4j accepts out of order
> messages with no adverse effects.  The only reason this is not done is
> that the RFC says "thou shalt not".  Unfortunately, this seems to just
> be an arbitrary decision; the reasoning has not been retained for our
> benefit.

The reasoning is retained in RFC3117:

  Channels provide [...] the basis for parallelism.  Remember the last
  parameter in the command line of a BXXP frame? The "part of the
  application" that gets the message is identified by a channel number.

There are applications that want sequential processing, aka
"pipelineing". Those applications use channels to achieve this.

There are applications that require parallel processing. Those
applications use multiple channels.

There is a BEEP mailing list. Marshall Rose is on it. You might be
better off directing your criticisms of his protocol design to him.

Good luck,
Sam