Bridging the client/server divide
Node is designed for high-concurrency environments, where many clients connecting simultaneously can have their needs met quickly and predictably. This ability also implies that each client can expect a Node server to respond rapidly when it itself sends many simultaneous requests.
One of Path's key design beliefs is that keeping state synchronized across clients and servers is complex and difficult to do well. For this reason, applications built with Path exchange data between clients and servers exclusively through the WebSockets protocol.
The following is a high-level view of how Path handles client requests. We see how the cluster
module is used to share responsibility for handling socket connections among several socket servers:
Once a request has been assigned to a server that request must be fulfilled. We will call that a transaction. Each transaction is being fulfilled for a single user and, as such, fulfillment is delegated to a user object....