API development for persistent data sessions support

Abstract

This thesis studies and discusses the development of the API, called the persistency API, for supporting the persistent data sessions. Without persistent session support, network applications often need to be restarted from the beginning when intermittent physical connection loss happens. Application programmers can use the persistency API to achieve the service continuity. The persistency API provides the interface that allows a program to continue retrieve data from the point the connection is lost after the physical connection is restored. The focus of this thesis is to develop a generalized persistency API that supports various types of applications. This thesis studies the persistent session support for two types of transport protocols, TCP and UDP, which are used by major network applications. An application that performs text file and video file transfer is implemented to demonstrate the persistent data transfer sessions for TCP and UDP, respectively. The study shows that the proposed APIs can support the data transfer continuity in the reconnection process.