The streaming API was discussed on the SAGA list because the set of people interested in that API are also participating in the SAGA effort, and we felt that eventually it might be a candidate for inclusion into SAGA. It is not relevant to SAGA _as_of_yet_, as we don't have any use cases submitted to SAGA-WG. It looks similar to the stream API, but in fact cannot be folded into it. The point is, that the stream API operates on byte level, and does not require any protocol on top of the transport layer (tcp, udp etc). The message API has additional semantic requirements, which DO require a protocol between the endpoints on top of the transport layer. Hence, the message API could be implemented on top of the streaming API, but cannot be folded into it. The optical switching stuff is only relevant as some use cases deal additionally with that - the API itself is independent from the network layer. For now te messagung API should be handled similar as CPR and RPC I think: not considered for the API right now, but a good candidate for later inclusion (if we get use cases submitted). Hope that clears the confusion somewhat... Cheers, Andre Quoting [Tom Goodale] (Dec 14 2005):

Present:

Shantenu Jha and Tom Goodale

We didn't discuss much - I asked Shantenu why a messaging API had been discussed when we already have a streaming API which looks very similar, and he said that he thought that this was actually a discussion about an API for optical light path stuff and not actually supposed to be a SAGA API (in which case why was it discussed on this list ?). I suggested that it looked close enough to the SAGA streaming API that perhaps we could fold differences in and have a streaming API which would work for the optical light paths.

We decided that it is probably not possible to have another call before Christmas, so the next call will be sometime in the first half of January.

I would again urge everyone who hasn't already done so (i.e. people other than Shantenu, Pascal and myself) to send constraints out so we can come up with a day and time for calls which are not too excrutiating. We may even need to rotate the time by eight hours each call so that only one time-zone has a midnight meeting.

Please send your constraints to the mailing list.

Cheers,

Tom

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