[zeromq-dev] Architectural question on designing app and its performance

[Arnaud Loonstra]

Hi all,

I'm currently experimenting my way through some architectural patterns 
for application development. I really like the mental model of message 
passing, which suits zeromq apps.

ZeroMQ apps are mostly using a reactor model for the application loop. 
This would work out fine when parts of the program are communicating 
through zmq. However for some scenarios IO using zeromq might not be 
needed. For example in non threaded scenarios it might be more 
performant to not poll a file descriptor but to call a method with 
arguments directly as is done in the observer pattern. However how would 
one combine a reactor pattern with an observer pattern? Zloop from czmq 
has no support for such currently for example.

What is the overhead is the polling of filedescriptors compared to 
direct methods. What are proven approaches in this context? Has anybody 
thoughts or insights on this?

Rg,

Arnaud