Nirvana Concepts - Architecture Overview
Nirvana is a Message Orientated Middleware product that guarantees message delivery across public, private and wireless infrastructures. Nirvana has been built from the ground up to overcome the challenges of delivering data across different networks. It provides its guaranteed messaging functionality without the use of a web server or modifications to firewall policy.
Nirvana design comprises client and server components. The client component can be further subdivided into messaging clients, comet clients and management clients. The server component has specific design features to support each of these classifications of client as well as Scheduling and Triggers, Plugins, Federation, Clustering and Low Latency IO.
Server Components
The Nirvana realm server is a heavily optimized Java process capable of delivering high throughput of data to large numbers of clients while ensuring latencies are kept to a minimum. In addition to supporting the client types described below the Nirvana realm server has a number of built in features to ensure its flexibility and performance remains at the highest levels.
Client Components
Nirvana supports 3 client types:
- Messaging clients
- Comet clients
- Management clients
Each client type is been developed using open protocols with specific attention paid to performance and external deployment. Each client type has been specifically designed to transparently pass through firewalls and other security infrastructure while providing its own inherent security features.
Messaging Clients
Nirvana messaging clients support synchronous and asynchronous middleware models. Publish Subscribe, Queues and Peer to Peer functionality is all supported and can be used independently or in combination with each other. Nirvana Messaging Clients can be developed in a wide range of languages on a wide range of platforms. Java, C# and C++ over Win32, Solaris and Linux are all supported. J2ME devices and Web technologies such as Silverlight all exist as native messaging clients.
Comet Clients
Used in conjunction with Nirvana server plug-in technology, Comet clients use HTTP and persistent connections to deliver asynchronous Publish Subscribe, Message Queue and Peer to Peer functionality to clients. Comet clients include JavaScript, VBA, Flex and a native Objective-C/C++ implementation for the iPhone.
Management Clients
Nirvana provides a very extensive and sophisticated management API written in Java. Management clients can construct resources (Channels, ACL's queues etc.) and query management data (throughput, cluster state, numbers of connections etc.) directly from Nirvana realm servers.
