The Pluton Framework

The Pluton Framework

Introduction
General Documentation
- Background Reading
- Main Components
For Programmers
The FAQ page
Quick Reference to all pages

A note about navigation: on all pages, click on the image of Pluto-Charon at the top of the page to return to this launch page.

Introduction

Overview of pluton

Pluton is a framework which can help make network applications - especially web server applications - faster, lighter-weight, easier to debug, and potentially less resource intensive. The core features of the framework include:

encapsulation of functional services into self-contained, independent executables
a convenient, fast and simple interface to these functional services
an interface which actively encourages and simplifies parallel service requests to reduce aggregate latency
a serialization-agnostic interface between clients and services - you get to choose your serialization poison

The primary goal of the Pluton Framework is to replace large, brittle, high latency, network applications embedded in web servers with smaller, flexible applications which use co-operative, independent services in parallel to create a low-latency experience.

A simple example

Imagine you have a web application that makes calls to "getAd", "lookupUser" and "getBuddies". All of these functions are currently implemented as libraries which:

are called serially
make a network call to a remote service that can be very slow
may unfortunately leak memory
may unfortunately sometimes core dump

With pluton, you can isolate your application from all of these issues and run them all in parallel to greatly reduce latency.

Is pluton right for you?

A series of tests to help you decide whether pluton is right for you.

Situation How pluton can help

Your web application makes a number of network requests to remote services pluton can execute all of these requests in parallel and dramatically reduce your aggregate latency

Tuning your web application is complex due to the unknown performance of all the dependencies pluton isolates components and reports on their system resource usage

Your web application core dumps in mysterious ways (and you suspect a 3rd-party library you have no control over) Use pluton to isolate components so that buggy libraries do not impact the core application

Your web application makes calls to libraries that can block for too long (or that have timeouts you can't control) Move the library into a service then you control how long you wait for the service

Your web application is using a library that leaks memory Place the library in a separate service and your problem goes away

Your PHP application wants access to a library that is only available in C++ Write a small C++ service that calls that library then change your PHP application to call the service

Your Java application wants access to a library that is only available in PHP Write a small PHP service that calls that library then change your Java application to call the service

Your C++ application wants access to a library that is only available in Java Write a small Java service that calls that library then change your C++ application to call the service

You have computationally intensive operations that you would like to run in parallel Move the computation into a separate service and invoke multiple instances in parallel to take full advantage of all the CPUs and cores on the system

You want to prototype new functionality in a fast-to-write language like PHP, but be able to easily change to a fast-to-execute language like C++ Create the functionality as a service then write it in any language you wish without ever having to worry about language dependencies

You have rapidly changing functionality and continually reloading your web server has a negative user impact Place the functionality in a service as replacing services is completely transparent and non-disruptive

Your web application has a very heavy memory footprint due to the large number of libraries you use Move the libraries into separate services and dramatically reduce the footprint of your web server instances. If done comprehensively, your web application may be so light-weight as to allow keep-alives

Situation	How pluton can help
Your web application makes a number of network requests to remote services	pluton can execute all of these requests in parallel and dramatically reduce your aggregate latency
Tuning your web application is complex due to the unknown performance of all the dependencies	pluton isolates components and reports on their system resource usage
Your web application core dumps in mysterious ways (and you suspect a 3rd-party library you have no control over)	Use pluton to isolate components so that buggy libraries do not impact the core application
Your web application makes calls to libraries that can block for too long (or that have timeouts you can't control)	Move the library into a service then you control how long you wait for the service
Your web application is using a library that leaks memory	Place the library in a separate service and your problem goes away
Your PHP application wants access to a library that is only available in C++	Write a small C++ service that calls that library then change your PHP application to call the service
Your Java application wants access to a library that is only available in PHP	Write a small PHP service that calls that library then change your Java application to call the service
Your C++ application wants access to a library that is only available in Java	Write a small Java service that calls that library then change your C++ application to call the service
You have computationally intensive operations that you would like to run in parallel	Move the computation into a separate service and invoke multiple instances in parallel to take full advantage of all the CPUs and cores on the system
You want to prototype new functionality in a fast-to-write language like PHP, but be able to easily change to a fast-to-execute language like C++	Create the functionality as a service then write it in any language you wish without ever having to worry about language dependencies
You have rapidly changing functionality and continually reloading your web server has a negative user impact	Place the functionality in a service as replacing services is completely transparent and non-disruptive
Your web application has a very heavy memory footprint due to the large number of libraries you use	Move the libraries into separate services and dramatically reduce the footprint of your web server instances. If done comprehensively, your web application may be so light-weight as to allow keep-alives

Elevator Pitch

The key concept is that you move the major functions of your web application out into a separate set of executable programs. These separate executable programs are called services in pluton parlance and are managed for you by the plutonManager.

By way of example, if your web application currently calls subroutine AgetAd then subroutine BlookupUser and finally subroutine CfindBuddies, you can turn those subroutines into separate services and use pluton to exchange requests with those services. The value-add is that pluton makes this very easy to do.

And why would you want to move subroutines out of your application into separate services? The reasons are many.

For a start, pluton makes it trivially easy to call those three services in parallel - even in languages that do not support parallel processing such as PHP. If AgetAd, BlookupUser or CfindBuddies happen to involve high latency network requests, pluton automatically overlaps this latency and improved the response time of your web server - possible dramatically. Performance!

A second reason for moving a subroutine or function out into a pluton service is that it insulates your application from that function. If subroutine AgetAd happens to be a bit buggy or subroutine BlookupUser has memory leaks or subroutine CfindBuddies tends to dump core, moving it to a pluton service completely insulates your main application from those problems. Resilience!

A third reason for moving large subroutines into a pluton service is that it can significantly reduce the memory footprint of your web service and make it possible to run many more instances of your web service on a given system. Efficiency!

There are numerous other benefits too, but since we've reached your floor, we'll finish with this summary: By using pluton you can end up with smaller faster web applications that are much more stable and use less resources. True!

Documentation

Background Reading

For general reading start with the overview document. For a detailed understanding, you might want to read the background and motivation as well as the design document.

Main Components

The main components of the Pluton Framework include:

the plutonManager, the daemon which manages the self-contain services and the rendezvous sockets
the configuration file format used to describe each service
the serialization types which are currently defined
a description of Service Keys which are a pervasive part of the Pluton Framework used to discover services, identify configuration files and name temporary file system objects
and command line utilities to access and query the plutonManager and services

For Programmers

Currently pluton has language bindings for C++, C, PHP, Java and perl.

There is a special C++ API that supports programs written with State Threads or libevent. This C++ Non-blocking API is specifically designed to integrate with these systems.

Writing Service Programs

There are separate pages explaining how to structure and how to test your service.

If you are looking for an existing service to use, this catalog of services might be of use.

Other useful information

There are pages that:

explain the log entries generated by the plutonManager
give indicative performance numbers which show likely throughput and latency costs
discuss plans and suggestions for future versions
and finally finally, a FAQ to catch miscellaneous questions.

Quick Reference to all pages

If you know what you're looking for, jump straight to it:

ChangeLog.html

FAQ.html

about.html

background.html

catalog.html

CclientAPI.html

clientAPI.html

clientAPINonBlock.html

commands.html

configuration.html

CserviceAPI.html

design.html

fault.html

future.html

howToStructureService.html

howToTestService.html

index.html

javaClientAPI.html

javaServiceAPI.html

logs.html

overview.html

performance.html

perlAPI.html

phpAPI.html

plutonManager.html

sampleClient.html

serialization.html

serviceAPI.html

serviceKey.html

threading.html