Design pattern for client/server sessions?
- by nonot1
Are there any common patterns or general guidance I can learn from for how to design a client/server system where the both the client and server must maintain some kind per-client session state?
I've found any number of libraries that can help with some of the plumbing, but it's the overall design I'm wondering about.
Open issues in my mind:
How to structure the client/server communication so that bidirectional synchronous and asynchronous requests are possible?
The server side needs to spawn a couple of per-connected-client session-long helper process. How to manage that?
How to manage the mapping from a given client (and any of it's requests) to server state and helper process instances in the face of multiple clients and intermittent network connectivity.
Most communication can be simple blocking request/reply, but some will be long running processing tasks that the client will want to keep tabs on.
To the extent that it matters, the platform is Linux/C/C++. Not web based. Just an existing thick-client software app being modified to talk to backend servers for some tasks.
