Developing Applications with the CSI Framework

A General Guide

Framework Overview

• Developed over 10 years (since 1999)

• Represents over two man-years development effort

• Object-oriented application framework

• Targets Win32 applications

• Can be used with Delphi 2005-2007

• Can be used with Windows 2000 and above

• Specifically targeted at multi-threaded multi-tiered/distributed applications

Framework Goals

• Fundamental goal of the framework is to provide all necessary software “plumbing” for application development

• Secondary goal of the framework is to do this in a way that enables scalable development across threads and processes

Using the Framework

• Latest version can be downloaded from the ADUG web-site

• Follow the installation guide to install

• Simple Developer’s Guide can be downloaded from the ADUG web-site

Application Components

• Six types of application “components”:– Application threads– UI threads– Communications clients– Communications servers– Database managers– Globals component

Application Messaging

• All application components, except database managers, are “connected” via the passing of application “messages”

• An application message is actually an object that holds arbitrarily structured information

• Component messaging interface enables the asynchronous and synchronous processing of messages

• Component messaging interface enables the registration of other application components as “consumers” or “handlers” of messages

Application Configuration

• Static application configuration file (.cnf) lists the application components, their initial configuration, and their messaging connections

• Dynamic application settings file (.ini) enables any performance settings for each application component to be updated dynamically

Framework Layers

• Split into four layers– Core– Utilities– Application– Framework

Core Layer

• Essential system, string, date/time, file, and application routines

• Application logging, exception handling, and startup/shutdown management

• Configuration variable management• Singleton object management• Base threading framework, including a base thread

class, thread-safe utility classes, and thread-synchronisation classes/routines

• Essential utility classes, including integer set, id/value pairs, and text streams

Utilities Layer

• Additional compression, encryption, and network routines

• Base threaded-queue framework, including a base threaded-queue class and additional thread-safe utility classes

• Additional utility classes, including XML object, XML parser/assembler, stopwatch, class registry, virtual directory, and persistent queue

• Utility components, including timer and file iterator

Application Layer

• Application globals class to manage the application as a whole• Application configuration manager class to manage standard

configuration settings• Base thread message class to encapsulate arbitrary structured

data• Extended threaded-queue framework, including thread message

object handling and a thread timers class• Object/interface reference manager to enable the mapping of

object/interface references to strings• Generic TCP client and server classes for inter-process

communication• Generic database manager class for database access

Framework Layer

• High-level management of inter-process communication

• High-level management of database access

• Implementation of a configurable "application component" framework

• Implementation of a consistent thread messaging interface for all thread and communication "application components“

• Separation of dynamic performance settings from static application configuration

Useful Constructs/Techniques

• Separation of VCL-specific (non-RTL) code into a separate unit

• Implementation of an accurate high-resolution timer

• Optimised utility class to manage id-value pairs of strings

• Separation of Windows system-specific code into a separate unit

• Generic utility classes for text stream manipulation using records and fields

Useful Constructs/Techniques (cont’d)

• Class registry to enable the mapping of class names to classes

• Virtual directory class to handle a large number of files in a single directory

• XXTEA 128-bit encryption routines

• Zip compression routines

Useful Constructs/Techniques (cont’d)

• RAM and CPU usage logging

• Single application instance management

• Restart application on shutdown management

• Reference manager to enable the mapping of object/interface references to strings

• Thread timers class to implement timers for threads

Framework Benefits

• Reduction in amount of untested application-specific code

• Simplified thread-specific code

• Simplified database access code

• Simplified user interface access code

• Built-in diagnostic tools to aid issues resolution

• Consistent implementation of common functionality

Future Directions

• Cross-platform support: Win32 (now), .NET using Visual Studio (not yet released), Linux (hopefully with Delphi 2011)

• Additional core functionality: server solicit/client response message pattern (not yet released), thread pooling (in development)

• Simple installation support (in development)

• File Sync system (in development)

Summary

• The CSI Framework provides a relatively easy way to develop complex multi-threaded multi-tiered/distributed applications

Links

• http://www.adug.org.au/downloads/CSIFramework.html

Questions

• Any questions?