[mbackup-devel] Process block diagram

[James O'K. <jo...@mi...>]

http://www.jamesokane.com/mbackup-drawings/mbackup-internalcommunication-draft1.eps


In this diagram, I've drawn out the major componants that I would like to
see. I should have probably added a block called Indexer Module. I'll add
that to the next revision. I should also be a little clearer about what
those arrows mean because now that I'm looking at it again, I realize that
different arrows mean different things.

Master Control Module
	This is the decision making module. It tells other modules what to
do, when to run, and controld when data should be backed up.

External Communication Control Module
	When any part of the process needs to talk to another process, it
has this module negotiate the connection for them. This includes named
pipes, sockets and any other communication, except for disk reads and
writes. The reason for everything to flow through this one module is so
that new network excryption protocols can be dropped in without the rest
of the program needing to know, and so that we can multiplex
communication through one stream if desired. This also relieves the rest
of the modules from needing to know how to create a tcp connection.

Reader Control Module
	This is somewhat of a module that controls other reader modules.
The master control module will ask this module for the next file to be
processed. In turn, this module will ask the ones it controls for some
data to be backed up. This will allow alternating reads over different
partions.

Filter Control Module
	This one is similar to the Reader Control in that it is the master
of all the filter modules. It is given some data and returns the filtered
data.

Writer Control Module
	As the name suggests, this one controls where and how the data is
written to disk or tape. If it wanted, it could be able to spool data to a
holding disk and then to tape or span several tapes, or multiplex several
streams onto one tape.


Any thought so far? I'll wait until I heard some feedback on this before I
send more.

-james