The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) - an object oriented network framework
The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) is a freely available, open-source object-oriented framework that implements many core patterns for concurrent communication software. ACE provides a rich set of reusable C++ wrapper facades (pdf document) and framework components that perform common communication software tasks across a range of OS platforms. The communication software tasks provided by ACE include:
- Event demultiplexing and event handler dispatching.
- Signal handling.
- Service initialization.
- Interprocess communication.
- Shared memory management.
- Message routing.
- Dynamic (re)configuration of distributed services.
- Concurrent execution and synchronization.
ACE is targeted for developers of high-performance and real-time communication services and applications. It simplifies the development of OO network applications and services that utilize interprocess communication, event demultiplexing, explicit dynamic linking, and concurrency. In addition, ACE automates system configuration and reconfiguration by dynamically linking services into applications at run-time and executing these services in one or more processes or threads.
ACE continues to improve and its future is bright. ACE is supported commercially by multiple companies using an open-source business model. In addition, many members of the ACE development team are currently working on building The ACE ORB (TAO).
