An Object-Oriented Framework for Developing Network Server Daemons

Developing distributed applications that utilize multiprocessing and network services is a promising technique for increasing system performance, scalability, and cost effectiveness. However, designing and implementing efficient, robust, and extensible multi-threaded client/server applications is a complex and challenging task. The Service Configurator (SVC-CON) framework described in this paper provides an object-oriented infrastructure that simplifies the development of dynamically configured, concurrent, multi-service network daemons. The framework integrates mechanisms for (1) local and remote interprocess communication, (2) I/O-based and timer-based event multiplexing, (3) explicit dynamic linking, and (4) multi-threading and multiprocessing to aid the creation of network servers that may be updated and extended without modifying, recompiling, relinking, or restarting executing daemons.