Hosting a Simulation

sczadzeck Mar 8, 2003 10:19 AM

I would like to use the JBoss app server as a platform for hosting a simulation. There will also be many thousands of clients that will be accessing this information and performing operations that will effect the simulation. What I need to do is have a process that is continually updating entity beans that is not initiated by any user but is started when the application is loaded. I have scoured many web sites attempting to find a way to do this with little success. The best idea I can come up with is to create a session bean that can start and stop the simulation. When start() is executed the session bean would spawn threads that advance the simulation.

So, I have three questions: 1) Is JBoss the best choice for this type of application or would I be better of with my own implementation. 2) If I can use the app server, is having a session bean start background tasks the best way to do this? 3) If I do spawn these threads from a session bean, will they be able to access my entity beans using their local home implementation?

Thanks for any help.

Scott

1. Re: Hosting a Simulation

tbfmicke Mar 8, 2003 5:58 PM (in response to sczadzeck)

Almost sounds like a multiplayer game :-)

1) What is "best" is hard to tell without knowing more about your app, but doing an own implementation of infrastructure sounds like a waste of time.

2) I think that using the timer handling in JBoss would work for you, look in scheduler-service.xml that is in the deploy directory. I have not used it so I cannot say anything about the details, but a search for Timer or Scheduler might give some results.

2-3) Spawning threds on your own is a big no-no inside application servers :-)

>
> So, I have three questions: 1) Is JBoss the best
> choice for this type of application or would I be
> better of with my own implementation. 2) If I can use
> the app server, is having a session bean start
> background tasks the best way to do this? 3) If I do
> spawn these threads from a session bean, will they be
> able to access my entity beans using their local home
> implementation?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Scott
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2. Re: Hosting a Simulation

joelvogt Mar 9, 2003 5:22 PM (in response to sczadzeck)

It might be worth writing an mbean that you could then activate/stop from the jmx-console. If it depends on your app being deployed then it should have access to everything you need.
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3. Re: Hosting a Simulation

burnsanthony Mar 12, 2003 4:43 PM (in response to sczadzeck)

check out swarm on sourceforge
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