[ecf-dev] getRemoteServiceReferences...adding non-blocking impl

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

In the remote services API, i.e. IRemoteServicesContainerAdapter, is 
this method for doing lookup of remote services:

IRemoteServiceContainerAdapter.getRemoteServiceReferences(ID[],String,String)

Here are the current javadocs

http://www.eclipse.org/ecf/org.eclipse.ecf.docs/api/org/eclipse/ecf/remoteservice/IRemoteServiceContainerAdapter.html#getRemoteServiceReferences(org.eclipse.ecf.core.identity.ID[],%20java.lang.String,%20java.lang.String)

This method is the primary way for clients to 'lookup' a remote service 
reference in the ECF remote services API.

In this bug, https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=249061 we 
introduce a on-demand service reference lookup, meaning that 
getRemoteServiceReferences call can potentially block (because of the 
messaging/IO involved in sending/receiving 'add proxy' request).

As a consequence I would like to consider creating a non-blocking (new) 
version of getRemoteServiceReferences().  That is, I would like to add a 
method like this:

public void requestRemoteServiceReferences(ID[] ids, String className, 
String filter, IRemoteServiceListener listener)

that would not block, but asynchronously notify the listener when remote 
service references were received.  Another design for such a 
non-blocking lookup method would be:

public AsynchResult requestRemoteServiceReferences(ID[] ids, String 
className, String filter)

The AsynchResult is essentially a 'Future' result...allowing clients to 
access the actual result delivered asynchronous inside of the AsynchResult.

Do people have thoughts about this?  I think it would make sense to have 
both a synchronous/blocking getRemoteServiceReferences (as we have now), 
and an asynchrnous lookup method, either via the listener or the 
AsynchResult.

Any thoughts/comments about this issue?

Scott