Hi Ruth, Bernhard and everyone,I agree with Bernhard that you should take a look at the call-channel concept - the only problem is that its a bit long winded to put together. Ideally I wanted to extend the Java syntax in our (the now expired Quickstone) JCSP compiler to do this much more simply, but we had to stop work on it before we got that far. We did however write a rather cool Java app to support code generation of complex call channel servers in bulk, but I'm not sure how much use that'd be to Ruth as it outputs Java. Another approach that might be worth considering is creating a call channel interface using a proxy object in a similar way to the Hibernate database library. Java Proxy objects allow you to dynamically create a Java interface and respond to method invocations pro grammatically. I don't even know if C# supports this, but I'd be surprised if it didn't. It does however depend on how bothered you are about efficiency. It's also a bit complicated - but more fun :). If you're feeling really adventurous you could use reflection (and possibly method annotations) to generate the necessary classes/interfaces statically at build time, which would get around the efficiency problem...
One thing that'd might make things easier (i.e. less long-winded) might be to write a class that extends CSProcess that just takes a delegate and calls it in its run method. It'd then be easier to create processes with less code - I have to admit I haven't fully thought this approach through as I'm not really that familiar with delegates.
Also remember that you don't have to use Parallel or ProcessManager at all if it's a real pain, you could just start threads in the normal C# way - the CSP synchronization operations will still work.
Good luck, Jim // Bernhard Sputh wrote:
Hi Ruth,below my suggestions on how to solve Your problem using JCSP.On Thursday 15 December 2005 17:39, Ruth Ivimey-Cook wrote:Folks, I'm new to using JCSP, and thought this might be a good place to ask for help. If I was wrong in that thought, please forgive me...Well there is a list called Java Threads, which I think centres around JCSP, but with JCSP being close to Occam I think it is alright.What I want to know is am I on the "right track", or is there a better way?Well looking at the code You sent it looks like a perfect application of Call-Channels (Look in the JavaDoc for the class jcsp.lang.One2OneCallChannel there is very good explanation given, iirc). Internally they work with two channel transactions but, for synchronisation, and data is passed directly. The server process provides designated methods. When a call arrives the server process acknowledges this and is put to sleep while these methods are called in the context of the client process. The server process resumes after the method call is completed.The downside is that to use a call-channel one has to extend the call channel class first to provide the methods You need. Apart from this necessary extra work they are great. It is even possible to deliver exceptions from the server to the client. Furthermore, the process placing the call does this by simply placing a function call, not knowing about the ongoing channel transactions at all.Hope this helps, happy hacking ;-) Cheers Bernhard Sputh