[An HTML version of this README file is available at the following URL
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html.
All software and documentation is available via both anonymous ftp and
the World Wide Web.]
THE ADAPTIVE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT (ACE)
An Object-Oriented Network Programming Toolkit
OVERVIEW OF ACE
The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) is a freely available
object-oriented network programming toolkit targeted for developers of
high-performance concurrent network applications and services. ACE
encapsulates the following user-level UNIX and Win32 (Windows NT and
Windows '95) OS facilities via portable, type-secure, C++ interfaces:
. IPC mechanisms
-- Internet- and UNIX-domain sockets, TLI, Named Pipes
(for UNIX and Win32) and STREAM pipes
. Event multiplexing
-- select(), poll(), and Win32 WaitForMultipleObjects
and I/O completion ports
. Multi-threading and synchronization
-- Solaris threads, POSIX Pthreads, and Win32 threads
. Explicit dynamic linking
-- dlopen/dlsym on UNIX and LoadLibrary/GetProc on Win32
. Memory-mapped files and shared memory management
-- BSD mmap(), SYSV shared memory, and Win32 shared memory.
. System V IPC
-- shared memory, semaphores, message queues
. Sun RPC
-- GNU rpc++, written by Michael Lipp
In addition, ACE contains a higher-level network programming framework
that integrates and enhances the lower-level C++ wrappers. This
framework supports the dynamic configuration of concurrent network
daemons composed of application services. This framework contains the
following class categories:
. The Reactor
-- Supports both Reactive and Proactive I/O
. The Service Configurator
-- Support dynamic configuration of objects
. The ADAPTIVE Service Executive
-- A user-level implementation of System V STREAMS,
which supports modular integration of
hierarchically-related communicaion services.
. Shared malloc
-- A component for managing dynamically allocation
shared and local memory
. Concurrency services
-- e.g., various forms of higher-level concurrency control
and synchronization mechanisms
. Network services
-- e.g., distributed lock service, distributed naming
service, distributed logging service, distributed
routing service, and distributed time service
. CORBA integration
-- Integrates ACE with CORBA implementations
(such as single-threaded and multi-threaded Orbix)
ACE is currently being used in many commercial products including the
Bellcore Q.port ATM signaling software product, the Ericsson EOS
family of telecom switch monitoring applications, the Motorola Iridium
global mobile communications system, and enterprise-wide electronic
medical imaging systems for Kodak Health Imaging Systems and Siemens
medical engineering.
OBTAINING ACE
The current ACE release is provided as a tar file that is slightly
larger than 1.5 Meg compressed using GNU gzip. ACE may be obtained
electronically from http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE-obtain.html.
This release contains contains the source code, test drivers, and
example applications for C++ wrapper libraries and the higher-level
ACE network programming framework developed as part of the ADAPTIVE
project at the University of California, Irvine and at Washington
University.
ACE DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
The following subdirectories are included in C++_wrappers.tar.gz file:
. ace -- the source code and binaries for C++ components (note that
all of these are at the same "level" in order to work around
deficiencies with Windows NT...)
. ASX -- higher-level C++ network programming
framework based on System V STREAMs
. Collections -- stacks, sets, strings, etc.
. Concurrency -- wrappers for Solaris, POSIX, and Win32 threads
. Connection -- implementations of connection
establishment patterns
. CORBA -- C++ wrappers that make it easier to work with CORBA
. Debugging -- C++ assert macro, dump methods, method call tracing, etc.
. IPC_SAP -- C++ wrappers around UNIX communication mechanisms
. Addr -- wrappers for various network addressing formats
. DEV_SAP -- wrapper for UNIX device I/O
. FIFO_SAP -- wrapper for FIFOS (named pipes)
. FILE_SAP -- wrapper for UNIX FILE *s
. IO_SAP -- wrapper for low-level serial-line I/O
. SOCK_SAP -- wrapper for BSD sockets
. SPIPE_SAP -- wrapper for SVR4 STREAM pipes and connld
. TLI_SAP -- wrapper for SVR4 TLI
. . UPIPE_SAP -- inter-thread communication mechanism
. Log_Msg -- library API for local/remote logging
. Memory
. Mem_Map -- wrapper for BSD mmap() memory mapped files
. Shared_Malloc -- shared memory malloc/free classes
. Shared_Memory -- wrapper for SysV/BSD shared memory
. Misc -- miscellaneous C++ wrappers for the GNU getopt utility,
Obstacks, GoF-style patterns
. Name_Service -- client-side classes for distributed name service
. OS -- encapsulation of UNIX and Win32 OS APIs
. Reactor -- a framework for OO event demultiplexing and
event handler dispatching
. Service_Configurator -- a framework for dynamically
linking/unlinking services into/from applications
at run-time
. System V IPC
. SV_Message_Queues -- wrapper for SysV message queues
. SV_Semaphores -- wrapper for SysV semaphores
. SV_Shared_Memory -- wrapper for SysV shared memory
. Timers -- High resolution timers and profile timers
. Token_Service -- client-side classes for distributed locking
. apps -- Several example applications written using the ACE wrappers
. Gateway -- application-level gateway
. Orbix-Examples -- examples of how to integrate Orbix with ACE
. gperf -- a perfect hash function generator program written in C++
. Synch-Benchmarks -- benchmarks for OS IPC and synchronization mechanisms
. bin -- utility programs for building this release, in
particular, a set of scripts for automatically
generating manual pages from C++ class headers.
. examples -- programs that illustrate how to use ACE components
. man -- manual pages for ACE in nroff and HTML format
generated automatically by OSE class2man
. netsvcs -- network services
. clients -- test programs that exercise the ACE network services
. lib -- network services implemented using the general ACE service
framework:
. Client Logger -- client-side for distributed logging service
. Server Logger -- server-side for distributed logging service
. Name Server -- a distributed name service
. Token Server -- a distributed token service
. Time Server -- a distributed time service
. servers -- dynamically linkable main programs that
configure the services
. rpc++ -- C++ interface to Sun RPC developed by Michael Lipp
(mnl@dtro.e-technik.th-darmstadt.de). This code
is distributed "as is" (under the GNU GPL) and is
not part of the ACE release that I maintain.
. tests -- a suite of automated regression tests to exercise ACE features
ACE DOCUMENTATION AND TUTORIALS
Many of the C++ wrappers and higher-level components have been
described in issues of the C++ Report, as well as in proceedings of
the following journals, conferences, and workshops:
. 4th IEEE International Conference on Software Reuse in
Orlando, Florida, April 1996.
. The SIGS OOP conference in Munich, Germany, February, 1996
. The OOPSLA '95 conference in Austin, TX, October 1995
. The ECOOP '95 conference in Aarhus, Denmark, June 1995
. The SIGS Object Expo conference in New York, NY, June, 1995
. The 1st USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies
in Monterey, CA, June, 1995
. The SIGS OOP conference in Munich, Germany, February, 1995
. The Winter USENIX General Conference in January, 1995
. 3rd SIGS C++ World conference in November, 1994
. The 9th ACM OOPSLA Conference held in October, 1994
. The 1st Conference on the Pattern Languages of Programs,
August, 1994
. The 6th USENIX C++ Conference, April, 1994
. The 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Configurable Distributed
Systems, March, 1994
. The 11th and 12th Annual Sun Users Group Conference in
December, 1993 and June, 1994
. The 2nd SIGS C++ World conference, October, 1993
. IEE Distributed Systems Engineering Journal, December 1994.
A collection of white papers and tutorial handouts are included with
the release. The documentation is stored in the ACE-documentation
directory on wuarchive.wustl.edu (approximately 4 meg compressed).
This directory contains postscript versions of various papers that
describe different aspects of ACE. You might want to read SUG-94.ps
first, since it gives an overview of the toolkit.
Document Published in or presented at
-------- ----------------------------
Acceptor-Connector.ps "Acceptor and Connector: Design Patterns for
Actively and Passively Initializing Network
Services." Presented at the EuroPLoP
workshop held in conjunction with the ECOOP
'95 conference, August 1995
ACE-concurrency.ps "An OO Encapsulation of Lightweight OS
Concurrency Mechanisms in the ACE Toolkit."
Washington University technical report WUCS-95-31.
ACT.ps "Asynchronous Completion Token" submitted to
the ``3rd Pattern Languages of Programs
conference,'' Allerton Park, Illinois,
September, 1996.
Active-Objects.ps "Active Object: an Object Behavioral Pattern
for Concurrent Programming," the proceedings
of the Pattern Languages of Programs Conference,
September 1995
Atomic_Op-94.ps "Transparently Parameterizing Synchronization
into a Concurrent Distributed Application",
C++ Report, July/August 1994
C++-report-col1.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 1
C++-report-col2.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 2
C++-report-col3.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 3
C++-report-col4.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 4
C++-report-col5.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 5
C++-report-col6.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 6
C++-report-col7.ps C++ Report Object Interconnections Column 7
C++-USENIX-94.ps "ASX: an Object-Oriented Framework for
Developing Distributed Applications," 6th
USENIX C++ Conference, April 1994
C++-world-93.ps "An Object-Oriented Framework for Developing
Network Server Daemons", 2nd C++ World
conference, Dallas, Texas, October 1993
C++-wrappers.ps "Systems Programming with C++ Wrappers:
Encapsulating Interprocess Communication
Services with Object-Oriented Interfaces", C++
Report, September/October 1992
CACM-95.ps "Experience Using Design Patterns to Develop
Reuseable Object-Oriented Communication
Software," Communications of the ACM, Special
Issue on Object-Oriented Experiences, Vol. 38,
No. 10, October, 1995.
COOTS-95.ps "Object-Oriented Components for High-speed
Network Programming," 1st USENIX Conference on
Object-Oriented Technologies, April 1995.
COOTS-96.ps "Design and Performance of an Object-Oriented
Framework for Electronic Medical Imaging,"
2nd USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented
Technologies, June 1996.
Connector.ps "A Design Pattern for Actively Initializing Network
Services," C++ Report, January 1996
daemon-design-94.ps "A Domain Analysis of Network Daemon Design
Dimensions", C++ Report, March/April 1994
DC-Locking.ps Double-Checked Locking, submitted to the ``3rd
Pattern Languages of Programs conference,''
Allerton Park, Illinois, September, 1996.
ECOOP-95.ps "Experiences Using Design Patterns to Evolve
System Software Across Diverse OS Platforms,"
ECOOP '95 conference, August 1995
External-Polymorphism.ps "External Polymorphism: an Object Structural
Pattern for Transparently Extending Concrete
Data Types," submitted to the ``3rd Pattern
Languages of Programs conference,''
Allerton Park, Illinois, September, 1996.
EuroPLoP.ps Acceptor and Connector, Design Patterns for
Initializing Communication Services,
1st European Conference on Pattern Languages
of Programs, Kloster Irsee, July, 1996.
IPC_SAP-92.ps "IPC_SAP: An Object-Oriented Interface to
Interprocess Communication Services" C++
Report, November/December 1992
JPDC-96.ps "The Performance of Alternative Threading
Architectures for Parallel Communication
Subsystems", Submitted to the Journal
of Parallel and Distributed Computing.
PLoP-94.ps "Reactor: An Object Behavioral Pattern for
Concurrent Event Demultiplexing and Event
Handler Dispatching," Pattern Languages of
Programs Conference, August 1994
PLoP-95.ps "Half-Sync/Half-Async: A Pattern for Efficient
and Well-structured Concurrent I/O Systems."
Pattern Languages of Programs Conference,
September 1995
Reactor1-93.ps "The Reactor: An Object-Oriented Interface for
Event-Driven UNIX I/O Multiplexing (Part 1 of
2)" C++ Report, February 1993
Reactor2-93.ps "The Object-Oriented Design and Implementation
of the Reactor: A C++ Wrapper for UNIX I/O
Multiplexing (Part 2 of 2)" C++ Report,
September/October 1993
IWCDS.ps "The Service Configurator Framework: An
Extensible Architecture for Dynamically
Configuring Concurrent, Multi-Service Network
Daemons", 2nd IEEE International Workshop on
Configurable Distributed Systems, March 1994
Service-Configurator.ps "Service Configurator," submitted to the ``3rd
Pattern Languages of Programs conference,''
Allerton Park, Illinois, September, 1996.
SIGCOMM-95.ps "AITPM: a Strategy for Integrating IP
with ATM," SIGCOMM '95, August, 1995.
SIGCOMM-96.ps "Measuring the Performance of Communication
Middleware on High-Speed Networks," SIGCOMM
'96, August, 1996.
SUG-94.ps "The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment:
An Object-Oriented Network Programming Toolkit
for Developing Communication Software",
11th and 12th Sun Users Group Conference,
December 1993 and June 1994
TAPOS-95.ps "A System of Reusable Design Patterns for
Communication Software," The
Journal of Theory and Practice of Object
Systems Special Issue on Patterns and Pattern
Languages
TSS-pattern.ps "Thread-Specific Storage: A Pattern for
Reducing Locking Overhead in Concurrent
Programs," submitted to the ``3rd Pattern
Languages of Programs conference,''
Allerton Park, Illinois, September, 1996.
I update these papers periodically to reflect changes to the ACE
architecture. Therefore, you might want to check the date on the
files to make sure that you have read the most recent versions of
these papers.
ACE TUTORIALS
I update these papers periodically to reflect changes to the ACE
architecture. Therefore, you might want to check the date on the
files to make sure that you have read the most recent versions of
these papers.
There may not be enough space on this ftp server to store the
following tutorial handouts:
OOCP-tutorial4.ps SIGS Object Expo, June 1995.
SIGS OOP '95 conference, February, 1995;
USENIX Winter Conference, January 1995;
OONP-tutorial4.ps ECOOP conference, August 1995
USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies,
June 1995;
3rd SIGS C++ World conference, November, 1994;
9th ACM OOPSLA conference, October 1994;
6th USENIX C++ Conference, April 1994;
2nd SIGS C++ World conference, October 1993;
CORBA4.ps "Measuring the Performance of Object-Oriented
Components for High-speed Network Programming,"
Object Expo, June 1995;
USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented
Technologies, June 1995
HP Labs, June 1995
corba4.ps "An Overview of CORBA"
Washington University Distributed Operating
Systems class
These handouts are available via WWW at URL:
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/
as at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the directory /languages/c++/ACE.
BUILDING AND INSTALLING ACE
Please refer to the INSTALL file for information on how to build and
test the ACE wrappers. The overall ACE release is very large (~1
Meg). Therefore, I'm sorry, but I will be unable to distribute the
ACE wrappers via email. The BIBLIOGRAPHY file contains information on
where to obtain articles that describe the ACE wrappers and the
ADAPTIVE system in more detail.
The current release has been tested extensively on Sun workstations
running Sun OS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.x (on both SPARC and Intel
platforms) using Sun C++ 4.x and GNU G++ 2.7.x. The release has also
been ported to SCO UNIX, HP-UX, SGI, OSF/1, AIX, Linux, Windows NT and
Windows '95. I expect that major portions of the release will port
easily to other platforms. If you can help port ACE to other
platforms I'd appreciate it.
ACE MAILING LIST
A mailing list is available for discussing bug fixes, enhancements,
and porting issues regarding ACE. Please send mail to me at the
ace-users-request@cs.wustl.edu if you'd like to join the mailing list.
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION FOR ACE
ACE is copyrighted Douglas C. Schmidt and his research group at
Washington University. You are free to do anything you like with the
ACE source code such as including it in commercial software, as long
as you include this copyright statement along with code built using
ACE.
You are under no obligation to freely redistribute any of your source
code that is built using ACE (be aware that rpc++ is distributed under
the GNU GPL, which has a different copyright policy). Please note,
however, that you may not do anything to the ACE code that will
prevent it from being distributed freely (such as copyrighting it).
Naturally, neither I nor my research group is responsible for any
problems caused by using ACE.
My goal is to see ACE continue to evolve and become a more
comprehensive, robust, and well-documented C++ class library that is
freely available to researchers and developers. If you have any
improvements, suggestions, and or comments, I'd like to hear about it.
Thanks,
Douglas C. Schmidt
schmidt@cs.wustl.edu
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ACE has been deeply influenced and improved by the following members
of my research group at Washington University:
Aniruddha Gokhale
Tim Harrison
Prashant Jain
Irfan Pyarali
David Levine
I would also like to thank all the following people who have also
contributed to ACE over the years:
Paul Stephenson
Olaf Kruger
Ed Brown
Lee Baker
Alex Ranous
Mark Patton
Steffen Winther Sorensen for
Chris Cleeland
Tim Harrison
Troy Warner
Stacy Mahlon
Charles Eads
Mark Frutig
Todd Hoff
George
Aniruddha Gokhale
Irfan Pyarali
Prashant Jain
Brad Needham
Leslee Xu
Alex V. Maclinovsky
Detlef Becker
Bruce Worden
Chris Tarr
Bill Sears
Greg Lavendar
Steve Warwick
Mats Sundvall
Andreas Ueltschi
Nigel Hooke
Medhi Tabatabai
Stuart Powell
Bin Mu
Andrew McGowan
Ken Konecki
John P. Hearn
Giang Hoang Nguyen
Carlos Garcia Braschi
Jam Hamidi
Eric Vaughan
Karl-Heinz Dorn
Steve Ritter
Chandra Venkatapathy
Matt Stevens
Bob Vistica
David Trumble
John Morey
George Reynolds
Hans Rohnert
Alex V Maclinvosky
Todd Blanchard
Rob Clairmont
Christian Millour
Neil Cohen
Dieter Quehl
Reginald S. Perry
James Morris
Mark Seaborn
Phil Brooks
E. Jason Scheck
Daniel Proulx
Bill Tang
John Huchinson
Jack Erickson
Byron Walton
Bill Lear
Mark Zusman
Aurelio Nocerino
Walt Akers
Greg Baker
Alexandre Karev
Pramod Kumar Singh
Bryon Rigg
Brad Brown
Patty Genualdi
Eshel Liran
Mick Adams
Chris Eich
Mike Flinn
Audun Tornquist
Sandeep Joshi
Kirk Sinnard <1764@mn.lawson.lawson.com>
Bernd Hofner
Craig Perras
Kirk Sinnard
Matthew Newhook
Gerolf Wendland
Phil Mesnier
Ross Dargahi
Richard Orr
Rich Ryan
Jan Rychter
Tom Marrs <0002104588@mcimail.com>
Bob Olson
Jean-Francois Ripouteau
Ajit Sagar
Ashish Singhai
David Sames
Gonzalo Diethelm
Raj
Darrin
Steve Weismuller
Eric C. Newton
Andres Kruse
Ramesh Nagabushnam
Antonio Tortorici
Nigel Lowe
Tom Leith
Greg Wilson
Michael Fortinsky
Marco Sommerau
Gary Salsbery
Eric Beser
Alfred Keller
John Lu
James Mansion
Jesper S. M|ller
Chris Lahey
Michael R"uger
Istvan Buki
Greg Wilson
Jack Erickson
Garrett Conaty
Brad Flood
Marius Kjeldahl
Steve Huston
Eugene K. Plaude
Joseph DeAngelis
Kim Gillies
Luca Priorelli
Alan Stewart
Hani Yakan
William L. Gerecke
Craig Johnston
Pierre-Yves Duval
Rochi Febo Dommarco
Jonathan Biggar
Scott Shupe
Chuck Gehr
Avraham Nash
Padhu Ramalingam
Jay Denkberg
Ayman Farahat
Tilo Christ
Ari Erev
I would particularly like to thank Paul Stephenson, who worked with me
at Ericsson and is now at ObjectSpace. Paul devised the recursive
Makefile scheme that underlies this distribution and also spent
countless hours with me discussing object-oriented techniques for
developing distributed application frameworks.
Finally, I'd also like to thank Todd L. Montgomery
, fellow heavy metal head, for fulfilling his
quest to get ACE to compile with GCC!