The Elecuter Cloud Platform is an object-persistence framework which features an advanced abstract querying engine, and comprises a number of components (see diagram).
The client-side user application interacts with the Application Platform Client Library which provides an abstraction over underlying data storage technologies. An object cache is maintained in the local database; in addition objects can be synchronized to the remote server. In it's current implementation, the synchronization process is asynchronous, a key design goal of the project. The key benefit of this approach is to allow applications to continue operating even when network connectivity is lost, and to continue from where they left off once it is restored.
The I/O interface is designed to capture data from, and deliver data to a number of hardware devices. This provides a substantially simplified interface between I/O devices and the database backend allowing the minimal programmatic “glue logic”. Several possible applications have been considered ranging from data capture through to full-blown control applications.
A key design of the architecture is that it is implementation inspecific, and as a result it is very modular. The aim is to allow for libraries to be added to utilise further database storage engines and I/O devices as required by the implementor. Further, several "helper" classes are provided to provide a basic implementation in most cases necessitating minimal customization. As time permits drivers can be optimized to make use of database-specific facilities where available.
Database schemas are written in an XML format. Tools are being written to extract database schemas from existing databases in order to minimize development time, although it will be necessary to define certain details such as synchronization modes in order to complete the implementation.
The client-to-server synchronization protocol includes methods for authentication and licensing. These can be implemented in user applications to protect IP assets. Please note that licensing models other than GPL require the purchase of a licence from ourselves.
