Salutation Scalability

Scalability of Salutation Architecture

One value of the Salutation Architecture is scalability. And this is demonstrated in several different areas.

Scalable Registry

The Salutation Architecture provides scalability in the 'size' of the Functional Unit Registry. The minimum requirement is for the Registry to maintain information about the local Functional Units. However, this can be extended (by increasing the amount of storage allocated to the Registry) to registering information about remote FUs that are of importance to the local environment. For example, if the local Salutation environment is a print server, the Registry may include information about all the print Functional Units that have been discovered via Salutation Capability Exchanges. The Registry may also serve as a network directory function, providing information about all Functional Units encountered locally or remotely, regardless of the Functional Unit type. In this case, one of the Salutation Managers on the network would be designated as the central directory. It would have the responsibility of finding all Salutation equipment and registering all discovered Functional Units. All requests by other equipment for Salutation resources would be directed towards this Salutation Manager which would respond accordingly.

Optional Support Layers

The Salutation Architecture provides scalability through optional client/server support. Some Salutation devices, applications, or services need only respond to capability requests, and never request capability information from others. These device support only Salutation's Server functions. This provides for a lighter weight implementation of the architecture.

Direct Manipulation

The Salutation API set is optional for implementations. This is appropriate for devices which closely integrate the Salutation Protocol into their product implementation, without the need for application isolation. This level of implementation is targeted for entry level or low function devices.