Re: Multiple Application Instances

FROM : Dave Rehring
DATE : Wed Apr 06 21:36:27 2005

On 4/6/05 12:02 PM, Daniel Hazelbaker at <email_removed> wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> <suckup>I come to all who are smarter than I with another
> question.</suckup>
>
> I have an application that "serves" a database and coordinates with the
> clients connected to it.  I would like to be able to have it "serve"
> multiple databases without interfering with each other. (As a usage
> example, say one database for each department).  This was not something
> I ever figured on doing in the initial design so it is not a simple
> thing to redesign the single server application to serve multiple
> databases within a single instance. (A lot of global variables and
> such).
>
> So my question is, is there an apple approved method of running
> multiple instances of an application, each with its own configuration,
> on the same machine?  I know I can "force" it to happen by launching
> the executables directly with Terminal, but I doubt that is an
> appropriate way to do what I want.  Or am I stuck with the choices of
> running on different machines or rewriting to deal with multiple
> databases in a single instance?


Sounds like your 'server' application has a GUI.  "Real" admin's hate this
[having to be logged in to run the GUI app].  They very much prefer daemon's
instead [that run without anyone logged in, that start automatically when
the machine boots up].

I would suggest breaking your server into three things:

1) a daemon that does the actual work.  Probably will need to take a
command-line argument pointing to a configuration file.  Should also support
something like accepting a 'SIGHUP' signal to make it re-read the config
file if it's appropriate.

2) a GUI app that can manage configuring and launching the dameons.

3) a StartupItem that launches the daemon's when the machines boot up.

Later,
--
David Rehring                  Psychos do not explode when light hits
VP of Research and Development them, no matter how crazy they are...
Atimi Software, Inc.
www.atimi.com                  And totally insane guy!