I see what you mean .. but how about a central 'service unit' that handle s all the input and output. The stages don't need to know anything about ea ch other .. they just request records and write records and that's it.
A stage cannot be expected to 'know' about what it's input and output str eams are connected to; it's a worker bee. In my version (limited as it is) eac h stage is nothing more than a DLL that gets loaded by the StageManager, ki cked off and it starts requesting records. The StageManager only services requ ests as and when it is asked to. By providing a set of interface functions tha t (in the StageManager) cause locking/unlocking; all of the internal pipeli ne complexity is hidden from the stage designer. Let me know what you think. James.
