TRF reporting mechanism

D. Adams
28jun00 1305

TRF++ provides a mechanism for sending and receiving messages containing data of any type. It is designed so that high level reporters can monitor algorithm classes.

Messages

Messages are described by three message classes defined in Message.h:

AbsMessage is an abstract base message from which all messages inherit. This is the usual form in which messages are carried.
DataMessage<Data> inherits from AbsMessage and holds the message data (type Data) and a string indicating the location from which the message was broadcast. This is the sort of message a free function would issue.
Message<Data,Sender> inherits from DataMessage<Data> and adds a reference to the sending class (type Sender). This type of message is issued by a member function.

Reporters

The abstract base class Reporter is defined in Reporter.h. It provides an interface to report a message of type AbsMessage. Concrete reporters attempt to cast AbsMessage's to known types and, if successful, report accordingly.

Algorithm classes hold lists of reporters and provide the method Algorithm::report(const AbsMessage&) to broadcast a message to each of the reporters.

dladams@fnal.gov