ACTIVE OBJECT

The 'Active Object' design pattern decouples method execution from method invocation that reside in their own thread of control.^[1] The goal is to introduce concurrency, by using asynchronous method invocation and a scheduler for handling requests.^[2]
The pattern consists of six elements^[3]:

★ a proxy, which provides an interface towards clients with publicly accessible methods

★ an interface which defines the method request on an active object

★ a list of pending requests from clients

★ a scheduler, which decides which request to execute next

★ the implementation of the active object method.

★ a callback or variable for the client to receive the result.

Contents

References

References

1. Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, Volume 2: Patterns for Concurrent and Networked Objects, , Schmidt, D, John Wiley & Sons, 2000, ISBN 0-471-60695-2
2. Bass, L., Clements, P., Kazman, R. ''Software Architecture in Practice''. Addison Wesley, 2003
3. Active Object