Ordered Presentation

Concept

Usually, DataReaders will receive data in the order that it was sent by a DataWriter. In addition, data is presented to the DataReader as soon as the application receives the next value expected.

Sometimes, you may want a set of data for the same DataWriter to be presented to the receiving DataReader only after ALL the elements of the set have been received, but not before. You may also want the data to be presented in a different order than it was received. Specifically, for keyed data, you may want Connext to present the data in keyed or instance order.

If we use Ordered Presentation, the access_scope controls the scope of the order in which samples are presented to the subscribing application. The access_scope may have four different values:

1. If  access_scope is INSTANCE, the relative order of samples sent by a DataWriter is only preserved on an per-instance basis. If two samples refer to the same instance (identified by Topic and a particular value for the key) then the order in which they are stored in the DataReader’s queue is consistent with the order in which the changes occurred. However,if the two samples belong to different instances, the order in which they are presented may or may not match the order in which the changes occurred.
2. If  access_scope is TOPIC, the relative order of samples sent by a DataWriter is preserved for all samples of all instances. The coherent grouping and/or order in which samples appear in the DataReader’s queue is consistent with the grouping/order in which the changes occurred—even if the samples affect different instances.
3. If  access_scope is GROUP, the scope spans all instances belonging to DataWriter entities within the same Publisher—even if they are instances of different topics. Changes made to instances via DataWriter entities attached to the same Publisher are made available to Subscribers on the same order they occurred.
4. If  access_scope is HIGHEST_OFFERED, the Subscriber will use the access scope specified by each remote Publisher.

Example Description

In this example, we illustrate how to control the scope of the order in which samples are presented to the subscribing application.

The Publisher sets its presentation QoS properties to enable topic-level ordered access. However, note that this only enforces ordering on instances from a given datawriter, and not from all writers on that topic. Also, note that ordered-access configuration needs to be configured in the subscription side makes so samples are read in an ordered manner.

The Subscriber application illustrates the effects of the access_scope presentation QoS, to creates two DDS subscribers. Subscriber 0 uses instance scope, meaning changes and samples are only guaranteed to be ordered within a given instance. Subscriber 1 uses topic scope, which enforces order across instances that are modified by the same datawriter.

Note that using instance access_scope does not guarantee that samples will be read or taken from the queue in a particular manner. Subscriber 0 returns all of Instance 0's samples, then all of Instance 1's samples. However, it would also be valid to return samples in the same order as Subscriber 1. To guarantee that samples from the same instance are returned together, use the take/read_*instance calls. See the online API for FooDataReader for more information.

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