AMQP Support in Hyrax

Figure 1. Hyrax Architecture at a High-level

Support for AMQP in hyrax is best handled by adding a new front-end to the server that can act as an AMQP client, reading information from an AMQP queue. Hyrax has an overall architecture that already supports this. Figure one shows a high-level view of the Hyrax architecture. The BES is the part f Hyrax that builds the bodies of a DAP response. The front-end (the OLFS) contains a set of handlers which respond to requests made using HTTP. Based on the request, the OLFS sends commands over a stateful connection to the BES asking it to make the correct response. Generally, the OLFS will have to parse the request URL and pass information from that URL to the BES. Even though the OLFS is designed to support several different 'protocols' like DAP or THREDDS, it is capable of responding to HTTP only (it is a Java Servlet; see Server Dispatch Operations for information about the OLFS design, implementation and extension capabilities). Thus, it makes the most sense to build a new front-end dedicated to AMQP.

While the architecture chosen to add support for AMQP is very important, other considerations are also critical to the success of the overall effort to run DAP over AMQP. One is the mapping between different DAP versions to AMQP. Since DAP was designed with HTTP in mind, how DAP and AMQP can best be matched merits serious consideration. This will entail looking at the current DAP implementation along with the evolving DAP, version 4, specification and its implementation.

Proposed Architecture for AMQP Support in Hyrax

Sharing one BES between two front-ends

Note: The issue here is that the OLFS maintains a connection pool so we will need to look at how the OLFS interacts with the BES master process (aka besdaemon) to make sure that the AMQP front-end can make connections and get new listeners. The beslistener process uses stateful IPC and a protocol that is effectively unique to Hyrax.