From: Phil Meier <phil.meier@...>
Date: 2007-05-25T16:20:13+09:00
Subject: Re: SOAP4r, threads, and Windows ... the mystery

Hi

> Hello,
> 
> I am part of a team developing a remote computing tool of sorts.  My
> part is to write the part that accesses a remote machine and dispatches
> essentially a batch job on that machine and fetches the output from the
> process.  I have decided to use SOAP as the communication protocol.
> Everything was well and good until we started tackling batch jobs on
> remote machines that would last longer than the SOAP timeout.
> 
> I came up with a prototype that uses two SOAP servers to communicate
> between the initiating machine and the remote machine running the batch
> file.  I then put the batch call into a thread and when it completes it
> notifies the initiating machine through its SOAP server.
> 
> Here's where things get interesting.  If both machines are Unix (I've
> tested on FC6 and Mac OS X), everything works fine.  But, if the remote
> machine executing the batch file is Windows, then the SOAP call to
> initiate the run of the batch thread blocks until that thread completes,
> even though you can see execution PAST the thread start.  And if the
> batch file thread takes longer, then hte SOAP connection times out on
> the client end.  It sems that there is some issues in how SOAP and
> thread execution are handled on Windows.

That's the point - threading in Ruby is done the "green threading" way. 
It does not uses real windows threads.
Search for Ruby/Threading in this newsgroup and you will find many hints.

> 
> In the short term I was going to punt on this: capture the timeout error
> and move on (as usual we have a product demo coming up).  But I'd
> eventually like a more elegant solution.  I'm hoping someone else on
> this list might have seen something like this before.
> 
> You can find the source of my prototype at:
> 
> http://homepage.mac.com/snowdall/.Public/upload.tar
> 
> To run it:
> 1. untar the package
> 2. in one terminal window cd into the directory and type "ruby
> inner_wrapper_server.rb" to start the process that would be on the
> remote machine
> 3. in another terminal window, cd into the directory and type "ruby
> runner.rb" to start the process from the initiating machine.
> 
> The file core.rb represents what would be the remote batch file.  The
> set_input and get_output methods would be used to send input to the
> batch file and get the output repsectively.  Try running it on Unix and
> it works ... trying Windows and it fails.
> 
> Good luck and thanks,
> Snowdall
> 

BR
Phil