Distributed Service Delivery with Coadunation

Coadunation is a distributed daemon server environment. This is a similar concept to an application server but aimed at daemons. This means that it provides a simple container based framework in which daemons can be implemented. Because of this approach it is possible to implement both daemons and web application in the same environment.

This is made possible through the implementation of a Tomcat Application Server daemon. This daemon provides the ability to implement web applications that communicate seamlessly with the deployed daemons in a Single Sign on environment (SSO).

Any deployed web application is able to communicate with any of the deployed daemons using RMI. The RMI references are made available via simple JNDI lookup.

The JNDI implementation with in Coadunation supports the standard "java:com/env" lookup provided by most application servers but also a "java:network/env" lookup. This lookup enable applications to perform a search for a daemon in a distributed Coadunation environment.

This means that it is possible to setup several Coadunation instances, bind them together and perform a simple JNDI lookup from a web application for a daemon, and than make the necessary requests on that daemon (For more information on the JNDI refer to the Coadunation getting started guide.).

Along with the JNDI implementation, Coadunation supplies a Service Broker daemon. This broker provides the ability to associate a service with a daemon. This means that it is possible to search for a service by name such as "world" within a distributed environment and find the JNDI looup for a service implementing "world". (Note: the service broker requires that a service be register with it when the daemon is initialized via Coadunation. More information can be found in the Coadunation getting started guide.).

Using these concepts, an application can be developed quickly and easily that controls the delivery of any service from front web application to distributed back-end daemon. A step by step exampled will be supplied in part 2.

There are existing examples provided with the Coadunation distribution, available at http://www.coadunation.net. Simply download the latest Coadunation Installer, read the getting started guide and get programing.

Part 2