SAS/CONNECT User's Guide

Introduction

The benefits of client/server applications are proven and many. The primary benefits include providing access to all of the resources on your network as well as maximizing the use of these resources. However, as client/server processing has been adopted and implemented by the business community, additional requirements have emerged.

In today's complex business world, tasks are best accomplished by a series of programs that work together as an application to produce a result. These programs can be spread across multiple computing environments that may or may not be homogeneous.

Often the programs that make up an application need to run on their own schedules, independent of the other programs. Also, as applications become more distributed, businesses will strive to simplify their networks and to minimize the number of direct connections that must be maintained and re-started in the event of a network failure.

However, one requirement remains the same whether all of the programs that comprise an application run on a single processor, or each program runs on a separate heterogeneous processor: programs must communicate with each other in order to accomplish the goal of the application. The message and queuing facilities that are available in SAS software can address all of these needs by using a flexible method of data exchange through messages.

This chapter describes the indirect-messaging (message queuing) concept and introduces the messaging services that have been added to SAS to allow you to easily write applications that can communicate with each other on a single processor or across a network. You can develop "thin" client applications that talk to "fat" servers. You can implement applications that perform parallel processing and load balancing.

You can even implement applications that communicate asynchronously with each other. That is, one application could send messages to one or more target applications that may not be currently running and that may not run for several more hours or days. These services are extremely adaptable which can minimize the cost of restructuring your applications to meet your ever-changing business needs.

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