From: Francis Joanis <fjoanis@..._.ca>
Date: 2004-06-05T22:53:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Transfering files using drb (distributed Ruby)

On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 05:46:04 +0900, Joel VanderWerf 
<vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

> Kirk Haines wrote:
>> On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 00:33:39 +0900, Francis Joanis wrote
>>
>>> Hello everyone,
>>>
>>> I'd like to know if it is possible to use drb to transfer files from 
>>> the server to the client (and vice versa)?
>>>
>>> For example, a remotely callable method could return a byte array 
>>> then, client side, that array could be written back on disk.
>>>
>>> If this is possible, how would the drb infrastructure "behave" when 
>>> transfering rather big arrays (say, 5~10 megabytes)?
>>
>>
>> It's definitely possible.  As to have the infrastructure behaves, you 
>> will have processing costs because the data has to be marshalled for 
>> transfer and then unmarshalled at the other end.  I regularly pump 
>> hundreds of k per second of marshalled data around though, with no 
>> problems.
>>
>> I'd say just try it.  DRb is extremely simple to use.  Put a prototype 
>> together and test it out!
>
> And if the file just gets slurped into a string, the marshalling cost 
> will be next to nothing.
>
> irb(main):002:0> str = (1..9).entries.to_s*10
> => 
> "123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789"
> irb(main):003:0> Marshal.dump(str)
> => 
> "\004\010\"_123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789123456789"
>
>

Thanks guys, I'm going to try it out and give you some news.

FJ