Message context

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Pretorian
Site Admin
Posts: 214
Joined: 21 Jul 2009, 10:21

Message context

Post by Pretorian » 23 Dec 2012, 17:09

A lot of people have commented that the message context is difficult to understand or unclear. Hopefully the following is easier and should clear everything up. My proposal is also to put the message context after the message type section, so it's all in one place.
The message context specifies how the message may be received / sent. Hubs and clients may support using the message in additional contexts as well. The message context simply specify an minimum implementation requirement with message types (anticipated flow of traffic). The message context is a substitute for explictly specifying message types.

The context codes are as follows:
|F |From hub (hub-client TCP)
|T |To hub or route through hub (hub-client TCP)
|C |Between clients (client-client TCP)
|U |Between clients (client-client UDP)

The following table is a message context and message type matrix:
|Context |Type
|F |I
|T |B, D, E, F, H
|C |C
|U |U

Ayo
Junior Member
Posts: 27
Joined: 23 Feb 2011, 13:50

Re: Message context

Post by Ayo » 23 Dec 2012, 18:52

I think the main problem with the message contexts is that they are indicated in the spec with a single character, and thus very easily confused with message types. I don't think having an explanation really improves that. Either writing out the context every time (e.g. "From hub" or "UDP") or numbering them (1-4) would be better.

Alternatively, we can also get rid of the "context" completely, and just write out the possible message types explicitely. That'd be even less confusing.

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