examples/server-async/README.MD

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Server Asynchronous Example
===========================

The full description how to create an asynchronous resource can be found in Jersey User Guide, chapter 
[Asynchronous Services and Clients](https://eclipse-ee4j.github.io/jersey.github.io/documentation/latest/async.html).

This example demonstrates JAX-RS 2.0 server-side non-blocking API in comparison to blocking and long-running
asynchronous operations.

The  goal of the sample is to demonstrate that with limited I/O processing threads
on the server the synchronous execution of a long-running task may lead to resource
starvation caused by I/O processing threads being blocked by the long-running
operation, unable to serve new incoming requests.

OTOH, when the same long-running operation is executed asynchronously, the I/O
threads do not need to block while waiting for the long-running operation to finish
and the overall throughput of the system is greatly increased.

Contents
--------

The mapping of the URI path space is presented in the following table:

URI path                             | Resource class            | HTTP methods
------------------------------------ | --------------------------| --------------
**_async/messaging/fireAndForget_**  | FireAndForgetChatResource | POST1
**_async/messaging/fireAndForget_**  | FireAndForgetChatResource | GET
**_async/messaging/blocking_**       | BlockingPostChatResource  | POST
**_async/messaging/blocking_**       | BlockingPostChatResource  | GET
**_async/longrunning_**              | SimpleLongRunningResource | GET

Sample Response
---------------

This section shortly describes a main difference between blocking and non-blocking approach implemented
in the example.

#### Blocking Approach

First you have to sent POST request which is shown below and repeat this call 5-times.

>     curl -v -X POST http://localhost:8080/base/async/messaging/blocking -H "Content-Type: text/plain" -d "My message"

All previous requests were processed using I/O Container threads, there was no problem with
a returning response and a response's delay until now. But if you run the 6-th call, the server will
be blocked. At this time I/O thread is blocked (because of ArrayBlockingQueue is full) and waits for
the call which should read and remove one of the saved messages. Once the a below mentioned
request is called, the Blocking has place for another message and waiting thread is processed.

>     curl -v -X GET http://localhost:8080/base/async/messaging/blocking

#### Non-blocking Approach

We can start with the same procedure as in previous approach. Sent the POST request shown below 5-times

>     curl -v -X POST http://localhost:8080/base/async/messaging/fireAndForget -H "Content-Type: text/plain" -d "My message"

At this time blocking queue in resource should be full, but if you send another request, the client application won't
be blocked and will receive the given response immediately. Since the server application doesn't block the I/O thread
but blocks a thread which is dedicated for processing the request. After the GET call, the blocked dedicated thread
is processed and returned to a cached thread pool.

>     curl -v -X GET http://localhost:8080/base/async/messaging/fireAndForget

Running the Example
-------------------

Run the example as follows:

>     mvn clean compile exec:java

This deploys the example using [Grizzly](http://grizzly.java.net/) container.