Overview of ACE
The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment
(ACE) is a freely available, open-source
object-oriented (OO) framework that implements many core patterns for concurrent communication
software. ACE provides a rich set of reusable C++ wrapper facades and framework
components that perform common communication software tasks across a
range of OS platforms. The communication software tasks provided by
ACE include event demultiplexing and
event handler dispatching, signal
handling, service
initialization, interprocess
communication, shared memory management, message routing, dynamic (re)configuration of distributed
services, concurrent
execution and synchronization.
ACE is targeted for developers of high-performance and real-time
communication services and applications. It simplifies the
development of OO network applications and services that utilize
interprocess communication, event demultiplexing, explicit dynamic
linking, and concurrency. In addition, ACE automates system
configuration and reconfiguration by dynamically linking services into
applications at run-time and executing these services in one or more
processes or threads.
ACE continues to improve and its future
is bright. ACE is supported commercially by multiple companies using an open-source business model. In
addition, many members of the ACE
development team are currently working on building The ACE
ORB (TAO).
Benefits of Using ACE?
Some of the many benefits of using ACE include:
- Increased portability -- ACE components make it easy to
write concurrent networked applications on one OS platform and quickly
port them to many
other OS platforms. Moreover, because ACE is open source, free software, you never have to worry
about getting locked into a particular operating system platform or
compiler configuration.
- Increased software quality -- ACE components are designed
using many key patterns that increase
key qualities, such as flexibility, extensibility, reusability, and
modularity, of communication software.
- Increased efficiency and predictability -- ACE is
carefully designed to support a wide range of application quality of
service (QoS) requirements, including low latency for delay-sensitive
applications, high performance for bandwidth-intensive applications,
and predictability for real-time applications.
- Easier transition to standard higher-level middleware --
ACE provides the reusable components and patterns used in The ACE ORB
(TAO), which is an open-source
standard-compliant implementation of CORBA that's optimized for
high-performance and real-time systems. Thus, ACE and TAO are
designed to work well together in order to provide comprehensive
middleware solutions.
The Structure and Functionality of ACE
The following diagram illustrates the key components in ACE and their
hierarchical relationships:
The structure and participants of the layers in this diagram are
described below.
The ACE OS Adapter Layer
This layer resides directly atop the native OS APIs that are written
in C. It provides a small
footprint, "POSIX-like" OS adaptation layer that shields the other
layers and components in ACE from platform-specific dependencies
associated with the following OS APIs:
- Concurrency and synchronization -- ACE's adaptation layer
encapsulates OS APIs for multi-threading, multi-processing, and
synchronization.
- Interprocess communication (IPC) and shared memory --
ACE's adaptation layer encapsulates OS APIs for local and remote IPC
and shared memory.
- Event demultiplexing mechanisms -- ACE's adaptation layer
encapsulates OS APIs for synchronous and asynchronous demultiplexing
I/O-based, timer-based, signal-based, and synchronization-based
events.
- Explicit dynamic linking -- ACE's adaptation layer
encapsulates OS APIs for explicit dynamic linking, which allows
application services to be configured at installation-time or
run-time.
- File system mechanisms -- ACE's adaptation layer
encapsulates OS file system APIs for manipulating files and
directories.
The portability of ACE's OS adaptation layer enables it to run on a
many operating systems.
ACE has been ported
and tested on a wide range of OS platforms including Windows (i.e., WinNT 3.5.x, 4.x,
2000, Embedded NT, XP, Win95/98, and WinCE using MSVC++, Borland C++
Builder, and IBM's Visual Age on 32- and 64-bit Intel and Alpha
platforms), Mac OS X, most
versions of UNIX (e.g., Solaris on
SPARC and Intel, SGI IRIX 5.x and
6.x, DG/UX, HP-UX 10.x, and 11.x, Tru64UNIX 3.x and 4.x, AIX 3.x,
4.x, 5.x, DG/UX, UnixWare, SCO, and
freely available UNIX implementations, such as Debian Linux 2.x, RedHat Linux 5.2, 6.x, 7.x, 8x, and
9.x, as well as the various Enterprise editions, SUSE Linux 8.1
and 9.2, Timesys Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD), real-time operating systems
(e.g., LynxOS, VxWorks, ChorusOS, QnX Neutrino, RTEMS, OS9,
and PSoS), OpenVMS, MVS
OpenEdition, and CRAY UNICOS.
A single source
tree is used for all these platforms. There is also a Java version of
ACE.
Because of the abstraction provided by ACE's OS adaptation layer, a
single source
tree is used for all these platforms. This design greatly
simplies the portability and maintainability of ACE.
C++ Wrapper Facades for OS Interfaces
It is possible to program highly portable C++ applications directly
atop ACE's OS adaptation layer. However, most ACE developers use the
C++ wrapper facade layer shown in the figure above. The ACE C++
wrapper facades simplify application development by providing typesafe
C++ interfaces that encapsulate and enhance the native OS concurrency,
communication, memory management, event demultiplexing, dynamic
linking, and file system APIs. Applications can combine and compose
these wrappers by selectively inheriting, aggregating, and/or
instantiating the following components:
- Concurrency and synchronization components -- ACE
abstracts native OS multi-threading and multi-processing mechanisms
like mutexes and semaphores to create higher-level OO
concurrency abstractions like Active
Objects and Polymorphic Futures.
- IPC and filesystem components -- The ACE C++ wrappers
encapsulate local and/or remote IPC
mechanisms, such as sockets, TLI, UNIX FIFOs and STREAM pipes, and
Win32 Named Pipes. In addition, the ACE C++ wrappers encapsulate the
OS filesystem APIs.
- Memory management components -- The ACE memory management
components provide a flexible and extensible abstraction for managing
dynamic allocation and deallocation of interprocess shared memory and
intraprocess heap memory.
The C++ wrappers provide many of the same features as the OS
adaptation layer in ACE. However, these features are structured in
terms of C++ classes and objects, rather than stand-alone C functions.
This OO packaging helps to reduce the effort required to learn and use
ACE correctly.
For instance, the use of C++ improves application robustness because
the C++ wrappers are strongly typed. Therefore, compilers can detect
type system violations at compile-time rather than at run-time. In
contrast, it is not possible to detect typesystem violations for
C-level OS APIs, such as sockets or filesystem I/O, until run-time.
ACE employs a number of techniques to minimize or eliminate
performance overhead. For instance, ACE uses C++ inlining extensively
to eliminate method call overhead that would otherwise be incurred
from the additional typesafety and levels of abstraction provided by
its OS adaptation layer and the C++ wrappers In addition, ACE avoids
the use of virtual methods for performance-critical wrappers, such as
send
/recv
methods for socket and file I/O.
Frameworks
ACE also contains a higher-level network programming framework that
integrates and enhances the lower-level C++ wrapper facades. This
framework supports the dynamic configuration of concurrent distributed
services into applications. The framework portion of ACE contains the
following components:
- Event demultiplexing components -- The ACE
Reactor
and Proactor
are extensible, object-oriented demultiplexers that dispatch
application-specific handlers in response to various types of
I/O-based, timer-based, signal-based, and synchronization-based
events.
- Service initialization components -- The ACE Acceptor and
Connector components decouple the active and passive
initialization roles, respectively, from application-specific tasks
that communication services perform once initialization is complete.
- Service configuration components -- The ACE Service
Configurator supports the configuration of applications whose
services may be assembled dynamically at installation-time and/or
run-time.
- Hierarchically-layered stream components -- The ACE Streams
components simplify the development of communication software
applications, such as user-level protocol stacks, that are composed of
hierarchically-layered services.
- ORB adapter components -- ACE can be integrated seamlessly
with single-threaded and multi-threaded CORBA
implementations via its ORB
adapters.
The ACE framework components facilitate the development of
communication software that can be updated and extended without the
need to modify, recompile, relink, or often restart running
applications. This flexibility is achieved in ACE by combining (1)
C++ language features, such as templates, inheritance, and dynamic
binding, (2) design patterns, such as Abstract Factory, Strategy, and
Service Configurator, and (3) OS mechanisms, such as explicit dynamic
linking and multi-threading.
Distributed Services and Components
In addition to its OS adaptation layer, C++ wrapper facades, and
framework components, ACE provides a standard library of distributed
services that are packaged as self-contained components. Although
these service components are not strictly part of the ACE framework
library, these service components play two roles in ACE:
- Factoring out reusable distributed application building
blocks -- These service components provide reusable
implementations of common distributed application tasks such as
naming, event routing, logging, time synchronization, and network
locking.
- Demonstrating common use-cases of ACE components -- The
distributed services also demonstrate how ACE components like
Reactors, Service Configurators, Acceptors and Connectors, Active
Objects, and IPC wrappers can be used effectively to develop flexible,
efficient, and reliable communication software.
Higher-level Distributed Computing Middleware Components
Developing robust, extensible, and efficient communication
applications is challenging, even when using a communication framework
like ACE. In particular, developers must still master a number of
complex OS and communication concepts such as:
- Network addressing and service identification.
- Presentation conversions, such as encryption, compression,
and network byte-ordering conversions between heterogeneous
end-systems with alternative processor byte-orderings.
- Process and thread creation and synchronization.
- System call and library routine interfaces to local and remote
interprocess communication (IPC) mechanisms.
It is possible to alleviate some of the complexity of developing
communication applications by employing higher-level distributed
computing middleware, such as CORBA, DCOM, or Java RMI. Higher-level
distributed computing middleware resides between clients and servers
and automates many tedious and error-prone aspects of distributed
application development, including:
- Authentication, authorization, and data security.
- Service location and binding.
- Service registration and activation.
- Demultiplexing and dispatching in response to events.
- Implementing message framing atop bytestream-oriented
communication protocols like TCP.
- Presentation conversion issues involving network byte-ordering
and parameter marshaling.
To provide developers of communication software with these features,
the following higher-level middleware applications are bundled with
the ACE release:
- The ACE ORB (TAO) -- TAO is a
real-time implementation of CORBA built using the framework components
and patterns provided by ACE. TAO contains the network interface, OS,
communication protocol, and CORBA middleware components and features.
TAO is based on the standard OMG CORBA reference model, with the
enhancements designed to overcome the shortcomings of conventional
ORBs for high-performance and real-time applications. TAO, like ACE,
is freely available, open
source software.
- JAWS -- JAWS is a
high-performance, adaptive Web server built using the framework
components and patterns provided by ACE. JAWS is structured as a
framework of frameworks. The overall JAWS framework contains
the following components and frameworks: an Event Dispatcher,
Concurrency Strategy, I/O Strategy, Protocol Pipeline, Protocol
Handlers, and Cached Virtual Filesystem. Each framework is structured
as a set of collaborating objects implemented by combining and
extending components in ACE. JAW is also freely available,
open-source software.
Back to the ACE home page.
Last modified 16:14:53 CST 16 December 2012