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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SCXML-197?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13958595#comment-13958595
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Ate Douma commented on SCXML-197:
---------------------------------
The new definition and implementation of the SCXMLSemantics by SCXML-196 also
automatically resulted in some further separation of concerns for the
SCXMLExecutor, SCInstance and SCXMLExecutionContext, which 'fitted well' with
the goals for this issue.
While those changes have been committed against SCXML-196, I'm describing the
high-level changes here.
The SCXMLExecutor now is completely 'detached' from both SCInstance and
SCXMLExecutionContext, and only holds a reference to the SCXMLSemantics and
SCXMLExecutionContext itself.
Functionally, the SCXMLExecutor now is reduced to be only a 'driver' providing
the public (user) interface for executing SCXML based state machines, and
receiving events to do so.
Behind this public executor facade, the SCXMLExecutionContext now manages
everything except the external event queue and driving the SCXMLSemantics.
The state machine processing through the SCXMLSemantics is driven by the
SCXMLExecutor providing it the SCXMLExecutionContext as input.
The SCInstance now hold all and only the state machine persistable state, and
can be 'detached' and 're-attached' in the SCXMLExecutionContext (serviced
through the SCXMLExecutor).
The default SCXMLSemantics implementation is fully stateless and invoked from
the SCXMLExecutor through only three main entry points: firstStep, nextStep and
finalStep, taking the SCXMLExecutionContext as parameter.
With these changes in SCXML-196 and SCXML-197, the goals for Milestone 1 on the
roadmap to SCXML 2.0 have been completely met and I'll create a milestone 1 svn
tag for it shortly.
> Better separation of concern between SCXMLExecutor and SCInstance and
> introducing a new SCXMLExecutionContext
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: SCXML-197
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SCXML-197
> Project: Commons SCXML
> Issue Type: New Feature
> Affects Versions: 2.0
> Reporter: Ate Douma
> Assignee: Ate Douma
> Fix For: 2.0
>
>
> For the execution of a SCXML instance, several external services are used and
> needed as well as management of intermediate state and external Invoker
> instances.
> Currently these are spread out between the SCXMLExecutor and SCInstance (both
> marked as Serializable...) making it confusing and even incorrect how these
> are managed.
> The SCInstance keeps a map of current Invoker instances, while the semantics
> for these Invokers are necessarily asynchronous and running in their own
> thread.
> This makes them unqualified to be serialized together with the SCInstance.
> I'll move these to a new SCXMLExecutionContext instead.
> The SCXMLExecutionContext will encapsulate all non-persistable SCXML state,
> the internal event queue and all external services like the ErrorReporter,
> the (external) EventDispatcher
> and the NotificationRegistry (see below).
> The SCInstance currently holds the NotificationRegistry, which maintains a
> map of external SCXMListeners, which likewise should not be serialized
> together with the SCInstance.
> And the SCInstance hold a public reference to the SCXMLExecutor, which is
> used for the callback handling from Invokers, but if the SCInstance and/or
> SCXMLExecutor would be serialized, there is nothing to 'talk back' to.
> It will require some changes in the handling and communication with the
> Invokers, but once done then the SCInstance also no longer need to reference
> the SCXMLExecutor.
> For the SCXMLExecutor I will introduce an external event queue, which can be
> access concurrently, and the Invokers can and only need access to the
> SCXMLExecutor for adding events to this queue. The SCXMLExecutor thus will
> provide all the 'external' APIs, the SCXMLExecutionContext all the 'internal'
> APIs.
> The intend is to make the SCXMLExecutor and the SCXMLExecutionContext
> non-serializable and instead move the current Status and SCXML model object
> to the SCInstance instance,
> which then properly and completely will encapsulate all 'persistable' SCXML
> instance state, and can be 'detached' and 're-attached' from the
> SCXMLExecutor to be persisted or serialized.
> The SCXMLExecutionContext then will be used as single 'context' parameter for
> the SCMLSemantics provided algorithms, besides the current processing 'step'
> state, which will makes the current API a lot cleaner and the new Algorithm
> inplementations (SCXML-196) a lot easier.
> For the execution of Actions (SCXML executable content), I'll also introduce
> a new ActionExecutionContext, on top of the SCXMLExecutionContext, which
> expose only a subset of the SCXMLExecutionContext as only needed by the
> Action execution, thereby reducing the exposure of the internal API and state
> management.
> These changes will have a big impact on the current APIs, but the advantage
> is that further and future changes will be much easier to do, and with a lot
> less impact than this one time upfront big change now.
> All the internal APIs have to change anyway, no matter what, to be able to
> support and implement the current SCXML specification requirements.
> Because both the internal events and external events will now properly be
> managed through separate queues, it now also becomes easy to implement the
> 'single event step' sequential processing, as required by the specification,
> including asynchronous handling (receiving) of external events.
> To a large extend this thus also will solve SCXML-112.
> The result of all this is a SCXMLExecutor which only will need and have 3
> (primary) instance variables: a SCXMLSemantics, SCInstance and
> SCXMLExecutionContext,
> and with a clean separation of concern between them.
> This will then complete a major step for Milestone 0 of the
> [Roadmap|http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-scxml/roadmap.html] towards
> Commons SCXML 2.0.
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