How have you structured your network oriented apps?

Question

I\'m starting the design of a new app that is primarily network oriented, and I\'m looking for some advice from people who have come up with a good architectural design, or OOP

Answer 1

I am on the tail end of a client-server app that I started writing a few weeks ago. I used WCF for the .Net cient & server.

But the server also had to connect to a device on the network that only understood ASCII over TCP/IP.

Did you abstract out the communication bits?

Yes. I guess. I mean, I am not sure I understand your question 100%. For my TCP connection to the 3rd party device I hid the details of the TCP connection and communication behind a class I wrote. The device in question converts ASCII commands to IR signals to control things like satellite dishes and DVD players. I abstracted the TCP communication into a class so all my server had to do is make a call like:

_irService.SendCommand(someAsciiCommand);

What class entities did you come up with?

They were based on my domain. Yours should be based on whatever your domain is. I am not sure I understand that question beyond that. Your domain is going to dictate your objects.

In my domain I was dealing with a server application that was in charge of scheduling and playing multicast broadcasts over UDP utilizing VLC. These multicast broadcasts had to be configurable in every aspect.

When I analyzed the domain I came up with a model that consisted of Broadcasts, Channels, Devices and BroadcastProcesses (a class that was in charge of starting a vlc.exe process and maintaining its lifecycle).

The domain had little impact on the networking technology. I ended up with a few duplex "services" in WCF that allowed me to manipulate the domain. But the networking choices were not dictated by the domain. I wanted a TCP connection with binary serialization of my objects, and I wanted a two-way communication with the server so my clients could get real-time updates via callbacks. Those options were available to me regardless of what my domain looked like.