Half-push/half-polling

Abstract

To create constantly evolving software, the upgrading is an essential factor. There are two ways to upgrade, pushing and polling. Polling has the advantage of keeping the latest versions of all the clients, but can cause heavy server load by simultaneously connections to many clients and unnecessary network traffics. On the other hand, push causes much less because push can upgrade the specific clients, but there is cumbersome monitoring to keep stopped clients on latest version. The Half-Push/Half-Polling pattern mixes these two different ways, keeping their advantages, eliminating their disadvantages. Copyright 2009.