Concept
- RT-DESK is basically a message manager of temporized events in simulation time, which distributes messages in sync with real time.
- Transmitters and receivers of messages are the application objects.
- RT-DESK only manages the messages but it does not perform any tasks related to them. The receiver object is the one that executes the task linked to the object itself depending on the message.
- It is self-contained, so it can be easily incorporated into other applications.
Main functions
- It provides data structures and the necessary functions to design the message sending/receiving mechanism.
- It manages message sending.
- It keeps sent messages that have not already been received, organized by runtime.
- It delivers messages in the specified time period..
Messages
RT-DESK provides basic, simple messages that comprise only the object that sends them, the object that receives them and time in which they must be executed after sending. In order to optimize the use of memory during runtime it provides a message pool. This pool could be increased during runtime if the demand for messages was greater.
Only from the version 2.0
Messages can be proprietary. That is, if an object is going to be resent during the whole runtime, it simply creates it in its constructor and it marks it as private. That prevents it from calling the pool repeatedly.
If a more complex message is needed, the programmer simply creates a new class of message that inherits from the basic message so he can add the information that he needs. Then, simply tell RT-DESK what the new type of message is and it will generate a message pool of this type.
Each type of message has its own pool.