Banzai: a Java framework for the implementation of high-performance servers

ABSTRACT

This paper presents Banzai a Java framework that uses the Tatoo parser generator to simplify the implementation of high-performance servers based on plain-text protocols. This approach conciliates the use of formally defined grammars for protocol parsing and the efficiency of the implementation. We argue that the use of the formal grammars simplifies the implementation of the protocol and we show that an HTTP server built using the Banzai framework is as efficient as several existing ad-hoc high-performance HTTP servers. The Banzai framework relies on the ability of Tatoo to produce push non-blocking parsers with a fixed memory footprint during parsing and on a generic and efficient server architecture.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Keywords:
non-blocking I/O, parsing, protocol, protocol parsing and server architecture, server