Application architecture selection

Question

Hi all,
My question is a high level question for experienced developers. I am developing a remote administration module for an application. Main functionalities are login, logout, change password, changing runtime parameters, etc. (What else can they be, by the way :)
There will be information exchange between server and client periodically. (5 secs, for instance).
There are basically two possible approaches:
1) I can open a socket connection to the application server for every event and periodic information exchange mentined above,
2) I can open one socket connection and use it throughout the lifetime of the client application. In this case, I must dispatch the incoming messages to different objects.
What would you prefer? Or do you have any other idea?
Thanks

Answer 1

5 Year Developer, Network Engineer, Website Designer, etc
I am @ your service!
My design would be to use a per-message socket life. This depends on what traffic (message) load you are expecting. Heavy loads would be cuase for life-time sockets, low loads would be best for message-life sockets.
There are many different configuratable options on both client and server -sides. However, this would need some extra code, but not that much.
I have been creating software-based IP Routers/Network Access facilities and Interactive Content Generation servers. Web Clients are vary easy to make.
Remember this point: Keep It Simple Stupid! KISS is a term used in model toy markets. It basically means not to make things complex - who needs that anyway?
Here is a web client - vary basic: see how I use the KISS idea.
public class WebClient {
public WebClient(URL url) {
URLConnection link = ur.openConnection();
url.connect();
about 6 lines!
Anyway, I have a large technical paper on Network programming models and ideas based on my experiances. If you would like to have, just send me a letter: [email protected]