Applet Producer-Consumer gives solution to the asynchronous production and consumption of information. Producer place Objects in the Queue and Consumer pulls them from the Queue. In the distributed system the Producer (sender of data) and Consumer(receiver of data) may reside in different subsystems, which may be integrated not so tightly. For the model with simple direct topology Consumer is the direct listener of Producer. For the model with Queuing adapter sending of an event in Producer is decoupled with receiving of events in the Consumer by Queue. Other models are considered in the Event Model. (https://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~elhadad/se/events.html) The Asynchronous and Synchronous layers in the Architectural Pattern Half-Sync/Half-Async (http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/patterns-ace.html) communicate as a Producer (Asynchronous layer) and Consumer (Synchronous layer) by passing messages through Message Queue. Message-Driven Beans of the EJB 2.0 allow a loose coupling between the Message Producer and the Message Consumer. Application example of this framework is the Publish/Subscribe Application (http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/05/22/ejb_msg.html), where Producer is a Publisher and Consumer is a Subscriber. The typical Producer/Consumer example can be found on the Java Sun site. Java Message Service (JMS) programming model includes a supplier named MessageProducer and consumer named MessageConsumer. This model is very close to the Notification Service model. In the article JMS and CORBA Notification Interworking relation between Notification Service and JMS interfaces is considered (http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/12/12/jms_not.html). Independent Animation Canvases Animation implemented in two Views: Producer Consumer Console (PC Console) and Thread Monitor (TM View), every view in own thread, updating with own renewal period: 200 ms for PC Console and 400 ms for TM View. public class PCCanvas extends Canvas implements Runnable { ... public synchronized void setPCCanvasStop() { runPCCanvas = false; } public synchronized void setPCCanvasRun() { runPCCanvas = true; } public synchronized boolean getPCCanvasFlag() { return runPCCanvas; } ... public void run() { while(getPCCanvasFlag()) { try { Thread.sleep(pcPeriod); } catch ( java.lang.InterruptedException ie) { ... } repaint(); } } ... public void startPCCanvas() { if (threadPCCanvas == null) { threadPCCanvas = new Thread(this, "PC Console"); threadPCCanvas.start(); } } } When browser leaves current page the method setPCCanvasStop() of class PCCanvas is invoked from the method stop() of class ApprocoApplet, inheriting from the Applet and repaint loop will be broken. Similarly, for the TM View: public class TMCanvas extends Canvas implements Runnable { ... public void run() { while(getTMCanvasFlag()) { try { Thread.sleep(tmPeriod); } catch ( java.lang.InterruptedException ie) { ... } repaint(); } } } Thread Monitor There are 7 threads in the applet Approco: 4 Consumers Threads, Producer Thread, PC Console Thread and TM View Thread. 6 of these threads are monitored in the TM View (all except for TM View itself). As it was menthioned above polling period for thread List is set to the 400 ms. But these threads not all thread running in the applet. Open "Java Console" of your browser and type "t" (threads). Java Console shows AWT threads AWT-EventQueue-0 and AWT-Windows. Some other threads of Java VM of concrete browser are running with the applet. AWT-EventQueue-0 thread calls object's event handling methods such as actionPerformed . public class ConsumerButton extends Button implements ActionListener { ... public ConsumerButton(String str,int numb) { super(str); numbOfButton = numb; name = str; addActionListener(this); setFont(plainFont); changeLabelToStop(); } ... public void actionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent ae) { String name = ae.getActionCommand(); if (isCurrentNameEqualStop()) { changeLabelToStart(); return; } if (isCurrentNameEqualStart()) { changeLabelToStop(); return; } } } Snapshot from the Internet Explorer 5 Java Console Pri 5 AWT-EventQueue-0 Pri 5 AWT-Windows Pri 10 TaskManager notify thread Pri 5 main Pri 6 thread applet-Approco/ApprocoApplet.class Pri 6 Consumer 1 Pri 6 Consumer 2 Pri 6 Consumer 3 Pri 6 Consumer 4 Pri 6 Producer Pri 6 Monitor Pri 6 PC Console Pri 5 Global Task Manager Thread #0 Pri 5 Global Task Manager Thread #1 Snapshot from the Netscape 6 Java Console main,5,alive AWT-Windows,6,alive,dameon AWT-Shutdown,6,alive AWT-EventQueue-0,6,alive TimerQueue,5,alive,dameon Thread-2,5,alive Thread-3,5,alive thread applet-Approco/ApprocoApplet.class,4,alive AWT-EventQueue-1,4,alive Consumer 1,4,alive Consumer 2,4,alive Consumer 3,4,alive Consumer 4,4,alive Producer,4,alive Monitor,4,alive PC Console,4,alive The applet's update and paint methods do the actual drawing and execute in the AWT-EventQueue-0 thread because updating and painting are panel events. How to get Java Trace Stack for Solaris and Windows platform described in the An Introduction to Java Stack Traces or in Advanced Programming for the JavaTM 2 Platform Model-View-Controller Pattern simplifiers design and writing the code. Some advantages of MVC are clarified in the the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern. (http://cristobal.baray.com/indiana/projects/mvc2.html) Just by breaking the program down into the three MVC components, gains many .... Multiply view: the application can display the state of model in some views. Applet Approco has two views: Thread Monitor View and Producer Consumer Console. Applet controller contains some listeners: "Number of Consumers", "Queue Mode", "Production Period", "URL Label". Cristobal Baray (http://cristobal.baray.com/indiana/projects/mvc5.html) prefers pure MVC pattern, where controller doesn't control view , only through model. It maybe approach, where controller controls both model and view, and model also updates view. Selected Links 1. Software Engineering - Fall 1999, by Michael Elhadad https://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~elhadad/se/events.html 2. Patterns for Concurrent, Parallel, and Distributed Systems, by Douglas C. Schmidt, November 2001 Event Patterns. Concurrency Patterns and Idioms. Initialization Patterns. Miscellaneous Patterns http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/patterns-ace.html 3. EJB 2 Message-Driven Beans, by Dion Almaer Working with the new Message Driven Beans and JMS. JMS Architecture. Point-to-Point application. Publish/Subscribe Application http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/05/22/ejb_msg.html 4. JMS and CORBA Notification Interworking, by Steve Trythall, 12/12/2001 CORBA Notification Service, JMS, Integration Points. Message Conversions. Message Types. Message Filtering. http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/12/12/jms_not.html 5. The model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern, by Cristobal Baray MVC introduction. MVC advantages. MVC toy example. The heartbeat model. T he heartbeat controller. The heartbeat view. MVC things to do... MVC pointers. http://cristobal.baray.com/indiana/projects/mvc.html