Presentations

Heterogeneous Cluster Communication

Many group communications modules are built for a uniform communication model. In many cluster implementations this is often not the best solution to achieve the performance and scalability that is needed in heterogeneous clusters. This presentation will introduce a Tomcat module, nicknamed Apache Tribes, that has addressed the need to support messaging with different attributes per message and is used in the next version of Tomcat Clustering.

This session will cover

• Challenges in group communication in heterogeneous clusters
• Today's uniform and non-uniform solutions
• Comparison to existing frameworks that exist today
• Why the need for Tribes
• Tribes architecture and design - detailed overview of the Tribes architecture, and the reason behind it.
• Tribes configuration and usage
• Tipis - Introducing the Apache Tribes building blocks. A detailed overview of how a developer can build on top of Tribes to fit the exact needs for their environments
• Code examples and example implementations
• Usage in the real world

Zero Latency Http - Using Comet with Apache Tomcat

As browsers and web servers have become de facto standards, the need for instantaneous data exchange has grown. AJAX was one of the responses for a web client to efficiently communicate asynchronously in the background with a remote web server. Tomcat 6.0 has gone beyond AJAX and implemented a new feature called Comet, allowing for both asynchronous uni- and bi-directional communication between client and server while still leveraging the HTTP protocol and Java Servlets. The Comet technique has also been nicknamed "Zero Latency HTTP" as it circumvents the overhead by the traditional request/response methodology that the protocol implies.

The session will cover

• HTTP then and now, a brief history of the evolution of the HTTP protocol
• AJAX, what it is, how it works and what it has allowed us to accomplish
• Beyond AJAX, Comet - introduction to the Comet technique
• Uni- vs bi-directional Comet, what's the difference
• Technical overview of the Comet technique, challenges and their solutions
• Scalability discussions around Comet
• Using Comet with Tomcat