uludaggonul / snow-dots

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"client" and "server" are probably used incorrectly #24

Closed GoogleCodeExporter closed 8 years ago

GoogleCodeExporter commented 8 years ago
As implemented through r53, a snow dots system 
running with severMode active has primary contol of 
flow and may initiate transactions to request behaviors 
or data from another snow dots instance.

A machine running with clientMode active waits for 
transactions and executes behaviors or returns data, 
as requested.

Thus, in terms of initiating transactions vs. providing 
services, the uses of "client" and "server" are anti-
sensible.  The client should be the initiator and the 
server should be the provider.

The intuition for the current usage probably comes 
from the notion of a web server as being bigger and 
more complicated than a web client.  So by some 
vague notion of bigness, the current usage is 
somewhat sensible--the "server" does more.

It will be possible for one snow dots system, currently 
called the server, to request behaviors and data from 
multiple other systems.  In this case, the one-server-
to-many-clients relationship would also resemble a 
web server and clients. 

But the basic semantics of client and service provider 
are probably the most important consideration.  This 
seems to be the usual interpretation of the client-
server model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-server 

As of r53, not too many snow dots components use 
the terms "client" and "server", so it should be feasible 
to swap them or replace them with other language.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by Benjamin.Heasly on 27 Feb 2010 at 8:41

GoogleCodeExporter commented 8 years ago

Original comment by Benjamin.Heasly on 27 Feb 2010 at 8:42

GoogleCodeExporter commented 8 years ago
I swapped client and server terminology a while ago...

Original comment by Benjamin.Heasly on 23 Jun 2010 at 11:31