Windchill System Administrator's Guide

Unlike the default RMI registry implementation, the one used internally by the
server manager allows client connections to be timed out (discussed later), which
improves the scalability of the system in environments with many users. This
flexibility is one of the justifications for controlling the bootstrap registry as an
internal part of the Windchill system.
RMI-Based Server Locator
The primary purpose of the Windchill server manager is to introduce clients to
method servers as needed. The Windchill architecture separates the server
manager VM from the method server VM for purposes of reliability and
scalability. Clients call the server manager to obtain a reference to a method
server and then communicate directly with that server as long as they can. When
more than one method server is available, the server manager returns references
so as to distribute the load among the available servers.
The protocol for obtaining method server references in the client is encapsulated
within the classes that invoke remote methods. It includes fault tolerance for
network failures and server manager restarts, and generally will never be accessed
directly by Windchill customizers.
Server Management
The server manager is responsible for maintaining the method servers.
Server Launching
The server manager executes method servers as child processes on an as-needed
basis. Under high load, it expands the pool of available servers and contracts as
usage declines, within some range of management thresholds.
In general, all Windchill method servers are created equal. They are all instances
of the same implementation, which dynamically loads Java classes as necessary to
carry out requests received from clients. However, to allow for specialty servers
that may have unique management requirements, such as limitations due to
application-specific native libraries, the server management protocol allows the
assignment of unique service names that control the management thresholds and
the method server's startup arguments.
Although most generated interfaces invoke the default method service, you can
build custom interfaces that request specific service names.
Background Processing
It is often necessary to have a system carry out operations without being directly
connected to an end user. This is the case for periodic (time-based) activities, as
well as operations that are triggered by a user operation, but for which the user
does not wait. For example, an action is performed that promotes an object to a
new life cycle state. The change to this life cycle state may trigger additional
processing that is not directly related to the user's action. These follow-on
activities should be carried out in the background.
A-12 Windchill System Administrator’s Guide