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 Einet is the home of Argot and Colony, tools for developing service oriented architectures(SOA) and other distributed computing systems.
Argot provides a method of data encoding and data mapping from an application or server to a binary data encoding. The Argot data encoding method is a departure from other solutions to data encoding such as ASN1, XML and CORBA's IIOP. Argot uses 21 unique primative meta types to describe the structure and format of information. A unique feature of this is that the meta data uses the same Argot binary encoding. This unique self describing binary format can allow information to encoded for use in both structured file formats and distributed communications.
Both Argot and Colony are available under the Argot Public Licence. Argot is currently available for C, C# and Java. Colony is currently available for Java. Over time we intend to support a wide variety of langauages. Alpha versions of Argot for Lua, Python and Perl are availble via our subversion repository. To learn more about Argot and Colony, read the following.
Colony and Argot are patent pending to protect the many years of development that have been required to translate these new ideas into working systems. However, to ensure easy uptake we allow Argot to be used freely in any open source software and in most commercial situations. Please see the License page for more details. |
Recent
26 April 2009
The first Alpha release of Argot 1.3 is now available from the downloads page. The 1.3 series of Argot includes considerable changes to the Argot meta dictionary; the core technology of Argot. The most significant changes revolve around adding meta data versioning support and a new Argot compiler syntax. Check the README.TXT file to see the many other small changes have been made to improve the Argot. This release is Alpha, so very little testing or examples have been provided. In the coming weeks Argot will be cleaned up ready for a 1.3.0 release compilete with documentation, examples and better test coverage.
9 April 2009
I'm currently preparing a major revision of Argot which introduces the concept of meta data type versioning. A detailed technical discussion is being introduced on my Blog over at www.livemedia.com.au/Blog. This will form the basis of Argot 1.3 which will also come with a number of other major enhancements.
17 January 2008
I've just released a new version of both Argot and Colony. The big news with this release is speed! Argot is now on par with Java's RMI for both small and large packets. This is great news if you need high performance or are transferring large amounts of data. The releases are available from the downloads page.
21 November 2007
On the 29th of November I will be giving a talk on Argot & Colony at the Australian Java Users Group (AJUG) in Melbourne. For details please visit that AJUG site at victorianjug.dev.java.net
14 October 2007
After the last release of Argot and Colony, I've had a bit of time to look at how I can make Argot easier to use. I've done a small update and released ArgotJava-1.2.1a, which adds some new automatic marshallers for Array and Bean objects. This greatly simplifies integrating Argot and Colony with Java. I've updated the Bookstore example supplied with the release and the online tutorial to show how to use these new marshallers. Check out the downloads area for the new releases.
4 October 2007
Things have been very quiet around Einet. In the background Argot and Colony have continued to be developed. Today I am pleased to announce that we have finally released a new version of Argot, the Argot Compiler and more importantly, Colony! Colony is now available via the same Argot Public License as Argot. Colony is currently only available as Java, but provides a good reference for any other language to be developed. Colony has also been improved since the last beta version. Version 1.2.1 includes tightly bound interfaces and data, easier to setup servers and clients, multiple RPC implementations and more. You can download Colony from the downloads area. The download includes full source code and a comprehensive example to show you how to get started. You can also read the Colony tutorial on the site to show you how to develop with Colony. The web site has also gone through a trim with more concise information to help developers get started with Argot and Colony quicker. We're always looking for ways to improve the site, so please let us know if you've got any ideas.
19 January 2006
I'm pleased to announce that finally the source packages for Java, C and .Net(C#) are available for download. You can grab them from our download page! I'd like any feedback on the documentation, libraries or source code. If you have any questions or need clarification on the documentation or help with code, please send me an email at david @ einet.com.au.
19 December 2005 - Source Available!
After six months of hard work we are very pleased to announce that we now have Argot available for Java, C and C#. Even better, we have released the software under the Argot Public License which includes source code! The Argot Public License allows Argot to be used freely in any private commercial software or distributed freely in any open source software. Please read the License page for more details on how you can use the software. We have also made our Subversion repository available so you can keep up to date with the latest changes to the software. The repository can be accessed anonymously to retrieve the latest version of Argot and related tools. Included in the repository is a thirty page manual programmer's guide. The guide is also available as PDF on the web site in the White Paper's section. Currently, our Colony software which builds on Argot is not available under a similar license. You can still try Colony under an evaluation license.
12 October 2005
If you'd like to learn more about the development progress of Argot and Colony you can read David's blog. Progress includes a C port of Argot, a micro version of Colony which can shrink to as small as 3kb and Colony modifications to include strong interface binding. All the latest can be found at http://www.livemedia.com.au/Blog
12 August 2005
It has been a long time since the last news update. Work has continued on both Argot and Colony. If you'd like to get a better understanding of Argot, read the new Argot White Paper in the Articles section. Also online in the articles area is a draft paper on using Argot to create evolvable programming languages. An RSS features has also been added to the site. This will let you keep upto date with any new content or changes we make to the site. Simply point your favourite RSS client to http://www.einet.com.au/rss.x
4 October 2004
David Ryan, the architect of Argot and Colony, has just written an editorial titled What's Gone Wrong with Distributed Computing? It provides an overview of current distributed computing technologies and then discusses some features of what makes Argot and Colony different. If you're having trouble understanding why Argot and Colony are different you should read this article. David will be attending the Middleware 2004 conference in Toronto and the Oopsla conference in Vancouver in October. If you're attending and would like to meet and find more about Argot and Colony, please contact us.
12 September 2004
Colony has been updated to Version 1.0.2. This new release provides better support for remote exceptions. A server side exception with no Argot data type is returned to the client with a full stack trace. The NvmRemoteException is extended from Runtime exception allowing it to be thrown through client interfaces. The example bookstore has been modified slightly to demonstrate handling remote exceptions. Attempting to load a bookstore file with an invalid filename is a nice way to check the remote stack trace.
5 September 2004
A small update has been made to the Argot and Colony releases. Version 1.0.1 is now available. Changes include:
2 September 2004
After a lot of hard work, the web site is now online. The site introduces our new technologies Argot and Colony. You can download our Early Access versions, which provide a taste of the capabilities of this middleware software. The Early Access versions are designed to give developers an idea of the capabilities. We will be working hard to both improve the software and documentation over the coming months. |
Colony uses Argot to provide the middleware for creating distributed applications. Colony has functional similarities with XML web services, CORBA, and other distributed technologies. Colony has many features which make it better suited than XML based web services and CORBA in distributed applications. Colony provides a middleware framework which allows developers to be up and running quickly. At the same time the framework is flexible enough to allow a developer to change nearly every aspect of communications to suit their needs.
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