WaitPoint and Event - autosar

I have been reading about developing an Autosar Software Component. I'm still confuse about WaitPoint and Event on internal behavior. What are the main differences between WaitPoint and Event in AUTOSAR Software Component? and it will be great if you can show me a sample of c code according to them.

An Event in AUTOSAR has two different meanings regarding software components. Either it triggers a RunnableEntity or it resolves a WaitPoint. If a RunnableEntity is triggered e.g. by a DataReceivedEvent the Rte will activate your RunnableEntity and then you can call Rte_Read() to read the data. The second case is when you define a WaitPoint for that RunnableEntity and let the DataReceivedEvent resolve it. If you then call Rte_Receive() the function will block until new data is received.
Usually, such a function is implemented by an OSEK WaitEvent() and if the Rte receives data, it will use the OSEK SetEvent function to wakeup the task that called WaitEvent().

Related

Blocking within SLBufferQueueItf's callback

The OpenSL reference document does not answer whether it is possible to block within the callback specified by the call to SLBufferQueueItf::RegisterCallback().
I am thinking to do this when the player signals that it is going to starve, and the data is not ready yet.
According to OpenSL ES programming notes for Android, callbacks should never block or perform excessive work. See "Callbacks and Threads" section.

React Flux dispatcher vs Node.js EventEmitter - scalable?

When you use Node's EventEmitter, you subscribe to a single event. Your callback is only executed when that specific event is fired up:
eventBus.on('some-event', function(data){
// data is specific to 'some-event'
});
In Flux, you register your store with the dispatcher, then your store gets called when every single event is dispatched. It is the job of the store to filter through every event it gets, and determine if the event is important to the store:
eventBus.register(function(data){
switch(data.type){
case 'some-event':
// now data is specific to 'some-event'
break;
}
});
In this video, the presenter says:
"Stores subscribe to actions. Actually, all stores receive all actions, and that's what keeps it scalable."
Question
Why and how is sending every action to every store [presumably] more scalable than only sending actions to specific stores?
The scalability referred to here is more about scaling the codebase than scaling in terms of how fast the software is. Data in flux systems is easy to trace because every store is registered to every action, and the actions define every app-wide event that can happen in the system. Each store can determine how it needs to update itself in response to each action, without the programmer needing to decide which stores to wire up to which actions, and in most cases, you can change or read the code for a store without needing to worrying about how it affects any other store.
At some point the programmer will need to register the store. The store is very specific to the data it'll receive from the event. How exactly is looking up the data inside the store better than registering for a specific event, and having the store always expect the data it needs/cares about?
The actions in the system represent the things that can happen in a system, along with the relevant data for that event. For example:
A user logged in; comes with user profile
A user added a comment; comes with comment data, item ID it was added to
A user updated a post; comes with the post data
So, you can think about actions as the database of things the stores can know about. Any time an action is dispatched, it's sent to each store. So, at any given time, you only need to think about your data mutations a single store + action at a time.
For instance, when a post is updated, you might have a PostStore that watches for the POST_UPDATED action, and when it sees it, it will update its internal state to store off the new post. This is completely separate from any other store which may also care about the POST_UPDATED event—any other programmer from any other team working on the app can make that decision separately, with the knowledge that they are able to hook into any action in the database of actions that may take place.
Another reason this is useful and scalable in terms of the codebase is inversion of control; each store decides what actions it cares about and how to respond to each action; all the data logic is centralized in that store. This is in contrast to a pattern like MVC, where a controller is explicitly set up to call mutation methods on models, and one or more other controllers may also be calling mutation methods on the same models at the same time (or different times); the data update logic is spread through the system, and understanding the data flow requires understanding each place the model might update.
Finally, another thing to keep in mind is that registering vs. not registering is sort of a matter of semantics; it's trivial to abstract away the fact that the store receives all actions. For example, in Fluxxor, the stores have a method called bindActions that binds specific actions to specific callbacks:
this.bindActions(
"FIRST_ACTION_TYPE", this.handleFirstActionType,
"OTHER_ACTION_TYPE", this.handleOtherActionType
);
Even though the store receives all actions, under the hood it looks up the action type in an internal map and calls the appropriate callback on the store.
Ive been asking myself the same question, and cant see technically how registering adds much, beyond simplification. I will pose my understanding of the system so that hopefully if i am wrong, i can be corrected.
TLDR; EventEmitter and Dispatcher serve similar purposes (pub/sub) but focus their efforts on different features. Specifically, the 'waitFor' functionality (which allows one event handler to ensure that a different one has already been called) is not available with EventEmitter. Dispatcher has focussed its efforts on the 'waitFor' feature.
The final result of the system is to communicate to the stores that an action has happened. Whether the store 'subscribes to all events, then filters' or 'subscribes a specific event' (filtering at the dispatcher). Should not affect the final result. Data is transferred in your application. (handler always only switches on event type and processes, eg. it doesn't want to operate on ALL events)
As you said "At some point the programmer will need to register the store.". It is just a question of fidelity of subscription. I don't think that a change in fidelity has any affect on 'inversion of control' for instance.
The added (killer) feature in facebook's Dispatcher is it's ability to 'waitFor' a different store, to handle the event first. The question is, does this feature require that each store has only one event handler?
Let's look at the process. When you dispatch an action on the Dispatcher, it (omitting some details):
iterates all registered subscribers (to the dispatcher)
calls the registered callback (one per stores)
the callback can call 'waitfor()', and pass a 'dispatchId'. This internally references the callback of registered by a different store. This is executed synchronously, causing the other store to receive the action and be updated first. This requires that the 'waitFor()' is called before your code which handles the action.
The callback called by 'waitFor' switches on action type to execute the correct code.
the callback can now run its code, knowing that its dependancies (other stores) have already been updated.
the callback switches on the action 'type' to execute the correct code.
This seems a very simple way to allow event dependancies.
Basically all callbacks are eventually called, but in a specific order. And then switch to only execute specific code. So, it is as if we only triggered a handler for the 'add-item' event on the each store, in the correct order.
If subscriptions where at a callback level (not 'store' level), would this still be possible? It would mean:
Each store would register multiple callbacks to specific events, keeping reference to their 'dispatchTokens' (same as currently)
Each callback would have its own 'dispatchToken'
The user would still 'waitFor' a specific callback, but be a specific handler for a specific store
The dispatcher would then only need to dispatch to callbacks of a specific action, in the same order
Possibly, the smart people at facebook have figured out that this would actually be less performant to add the complexity of individual callbacks, or possibly it is not a priority.

Message versus Signal for Method invocation in Sequence digram

I am studying a UML sequence Diagram and I came across method invocation so, I have noticed that there are two ways to make invocation for the method-behavior in Unified Modeling Language(UML) which is signal and message but I don't know how to specify which one of them and based on what ?I mean When to use message and when to use signal because I think this is a very important design decision and should be well chosen?
It actually is, but I think the terminology that you use is not very acurate (message and signal). All kind of communication between two objects in sequence diagram is considered to be a message.
However, there are two basic types of messages - synchronous and asynchronous.
A usual method invocation, when a method invoker waits blocked till the method execution is over is synchronous invocation, a synchronous message. The invoker will receive the return value from the invoked method and continue its own execution.
In consequence, here is only one thread of execution.
There is also a asynchronous communication, when an object somehow sends a message to another object and immediatelly continues its execution without waiting. Example of this are SMS message, UDP package send, etc.
Here, there are two independent threads of execution.
By a signal it is often ment - asynchronous message send.
Kirill Fakhroutdinov's page http://www.uml-diagrams.org/sequence-diagrams.html explains message as
Messages by Action Type
..A message reflects either an operation call and start of execution or a sending and reception of a signal...
Besides the synchronous/asynchronous nature of messages it also points to "send signal action" as used in activity diagrams
Asynchronous Signal
..Asynchronous signal message corresponds to asynchronous send signal action..
To me an important distinction in modeling messages vs signals is the unicast/multicast(broadcast) semantics. Signal specifically can be send from one place (with all necessary arguments packed) and received at multiple places
Sequence diagrams allow modeling of the multicast behavior using the found message and lost message concept
(I'm not 100% sure but I believe I'm close)
EDIT: adding reference to more formal explanation backing my argument that signals have something to do with unicast/multicast(broadcast) as response to comment by #Aleks
The book "The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual" by James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson, Grady Booch, Copyright © 1999 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. explains the difference between messages and signals e.g. using following words
Message..Semantics
..A message is the sending of a signal from one object (the sender) to one or more other objects (the receivers), or it is the call of an operation on one object (the receiver) by another object (the sender or caller). The implementation of a message may take various forms...
Signal event
..
A signal has an explicit list of parameters. It is explicitly sent by an object to another object or set of objects. A general broadcast of an event can be regarded as the sending of a signal to the set of all objects, although..
..
Signals are explicit means by which objects may communicate with each other asynchronously. To perform synchronous communication, two asynchronous signals must be used, one in each direction of communication..
EDIT: adding the 3 different message notations as they are visualized by Enterprise Architect
Note that due to the asynchronous and multicast nature of signals (as mentioned above) the corresponding notation does not include the "Return Value" part

Generating event in MFC

How can we generate event, so that the framework will invoke its message handler OnSize() function in MFC at the instance at which I need.
Thanks
Use SendMessage or PostMessage functions and send WM_SIZE message
I am very often repeating this statement: Windows is not an event driven system; hence, you do not generate events. Event in Windows is an entity used to synchronize threads.
Each window works by processing messages from the system or application and acting accordingly. They can be predefined messages or message defined specifically for the application.
I respectfully but strongly disagree with previous posts. Even though information was given with good intentions, it shows a bad programming practice.
You should never use Send/Postmessage to change windows size. Use windows API:
MoveWindow or SetWindowPos. This will send WM_SIZE (and other companion messages) to the window to notify about size change request.
In general:
Never send or post messages that are generate by the system, since this does not work in most cases because system usually generates additional messages that you do not send, causing unexpected behavior.
You can use SendMessage function, something like this:
SetWindowPos (NULL, 0,0, myrect. Height (), myrect. Width (), SWP_FRAMECHANGED|SWP_NOZORDER);
To be more general, the way to synthesize events in MFC is by using SendInputfunction:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646310(v=vs.85).aspx

Using Core Data using multithreading and notifications

Here's yet another question on Core Data and multithreading:
I'm writing an application on the iPhone that retrieves XML data from the internet, parses it in a background thread (using NSXMLparser) and saves the data in Core Data using its own NSManagedObjectContext. I have a class - let's call it DataRetriever - that does this for me.
There are different UIViewControllers that then retrieve the data to display it in their respective UITableViews, of course this happens on the main thread using NSFetchedResultsControllers and a single managed object context that is used for reading.
I've read the answer to this question, which tells me that I need to register for NSManagedObjectDidSaveNotifications on the background thread (this will be done by the DataRetriever class I suppose) and then call the mergeChangesFromContextDidSaveNotification method on the reading context from that class on the main thread. This, I think, is totally thread-unsafe. I might have interpreted this the wrong way, though.
I've also read this part of Apple's documentation on the subject (Track Changes in Other Threads Using Notifications), and it tells me to simply register for NSManagedObjectDidSaveNotifications coming from the reading context in the view controller on the main thread and then it would have to call mergeChangesFromContextDidSaveNotification to update its reading context.
I went with Apple's recommendations: I now have my view controllers register themselves to NSManagedObjectDidSaveNotifications on the main thread using the reading managed object context as the source of the notifications. Doing this on the writing context probably isn't thread safe, and Apple's documentation isn't very specific on this.
Result: No crashes, but I am not receiving any notifications either.
Side note: I've read in Apple's documentation that notifications don't automatically propagate to other threads and I might even be listening for notifications from the wrong context, but why is Apple telling me to do it this way, then?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
-- EDIT --
Just to be clear, I'm registering for notifications coming from a particular NSManagedObjectContext, Apple's documentation specifically states (here) that some system frameworks may use an instance of Core Data themselves, so I could be receiving notifications from contexts that don't concern me if I don't specify a source. The documentation I referred to earlier on doesn't say anything about this, though. Any comments on this design choice are welcome.
The UI runs on the main thread so you want any intensive processing that might bog the UI down done on another thread. You have the context in the main thread listen for notifications because the main thread context is usually the only one that needs to update itself because of changes by other context in other threads.
All this is thread safe because data won't be deleted from the persistent store as long as one or more context is still using it. So, if context A has an object with the data while context B deletes another object representing the same data, the object in context A remains alive until context A calls for a merge.
Basically, each context operates in its own little world until you call merge. The race conditions that normally bedevil thread based data operations don't occur with Core Data.

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