Notification Strategy

[Rush Manbert]

We have a Thrift server application that manages data on behalf of  
numerous clients. We would like to add the capability for clients to  
be notified when the managed data is changed. Clients would tell the  
server what data they care about, and would be notified asynchronously  
if the data changes.

Clients talk to the server through an object interface that we have  
layered on top of the Thrift client side interface. We were thinking  
that we could add the notifications capability by adding a Thrift  
server to the client side object. This server would listen for  
notification messages on a runtime-selected port address. He would  
register the port address with the managed data server when the client  
side object is instantiated.

We like this approach because it means all of our client/server  
interactions use a Thrift interface. It lets us easily have clients be  
remote to the server.

My question is whether this seems like a good approach to the list  
readers and the Thrift developers. Is there some mechanism already in  
place within the Thrift library for this? Is there some other better  
approach?

Thanks,
Rush