Auto-discovery

In complex two tier systems with multiple application servers knowing which server to log into is a challenge. To make this transparent, kclient implements an auto-discovery protocol when started with the -K command line switch. Using the DNS name ksad it finds a master connection manager instance and presents a login dialog inviting the user to enter his userid and password.

The master connection manager will use these credentials to allocate the appropriate application server and will redirect the client to that server and log in the user.

Some users may get a choice of services, for instance there may be a training system as well as a live system. In that case the user will get a dialog showing the available services and inviting him to choose one.

This dialog is actually a web page and is customizable.

On a Windows Mobile client a simple list is used:

Failover support

When redirected the client will be passed a list of suitable application servers and it will attempt to connect to the first one. In the event that one is not available then kclient will try the next one in the list. If kclient does connect to an application server but that server later fails, kclient will detect this and issue a warning dialog.

It will retry the failed server 3 times just in case of a temporary failure before moving to the next server on the list

See also: