Talk:Active object (Symbian OS)

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I don't get it... Symbian is a pre-emptive multitasking system. How come the article is talking about cooperative multitasking?

Cheers! —The preceding

I believe the author of this section has confused "active object" with "active objects". Therefore, I suggest this section be moved to the other article, and any confusion between the two be cleaned up according to the "overlap" section discussed below. — Stimpy 16:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Symbian is pre-emptive, indeed. The thing is that in Symbian there are three type of objects involved in the Active Object: many Asynchronous Service Providers, one Active Scheduler and many Active Objects. The asynchronous service providers are on different threads than the Active Scheduler and the Active Objects, but this last two share the same thread -which is, in fact, the same as the application. Because of this reason, the multitasking performed by the Active Scheduler and the Active Objects is cooperative.Jmpep (talk) 00:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this article overlaps with

An "Active object" is an object that has interface and operations on different threads.The "Active objects" article seems to be a normal object that is waiting on service response--Tim 04:38, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, an active object has to do with multithreading, whereas active objects is a variant of the lockstep protocol in which packets from one client to another are wrapped in such a way that neither of them can read it until they've both negotiated their intentions. See Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games (Jouni Smed and Harri Hakonen) p.217-220 for more detailed information. — Stimpy 16:53, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see what Symbian's Active Object pattern has to do with the lockstep protocol. This is an explanation from Nokia on the subject: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Active_Objects_in_Symbian_OS. Not only does it never mention the lockstep protocol, but it do states that it is used for dealing with asynchronous calls between threads.Jmpep (talk) 00:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]