A nutritious view on different kinds of coupling of messages in AF

[Oli_Wachno]

Hi!

So, the European CLA Summit is over. We had a lot of interesing presentations, made and meet friends, had good food and exciting discussions.

One of those discussions took place this morning when having breakfast. Dmitry, Richard and myself were making up ideas, how to the different coupling mechanisms could be represented with analogies of daily life.

So... think of CLAs having food and the different ways of the "Have Food" Message

High Coupling Messages

Some restaurants require pre-ordering dishes. So the CLAs have to specify, what they would like to eat, before actually going out. (--> Edit time). The choices can not be changed at run time (being at the restaurant) The group of CLAs are bound to their choice, the number of meals is fixed causing a high degree of coupling.

Low Coupling Messages 

Think of lunch or breakfast buffet... All the CLAs can eat what is available, amount- and choice-wise. This is a kind of dynamic dispatching, It is on the CLAs to make a choice according to their preferences.

Zero Coupling Messages

CLAs going over to the Tiergartenquelle to have an informal dinner. By ordering theír meal when sitting on the table, they specify a message object to the waiter (--> Dynamically at runtime) to decribe what they expect to have.  The waiter can send over the message when ready.

You might realize, all three possibilities involve the "Have Food" message to be in some kind of class hierarchy (--> Menu)

@AQ: have you expected it to be like this or worse

Comments welcome

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I admit, when you told me you had discovered a food metaphor for message coupling, I started thinking about the interface to food and concluded you were going to post something far more gastrointestinal. I'm pleased to see that I was wrong. 🙂