Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the API documentation.

Unsupported Features

[Not supported (optional)] This note means that the optional feature from the DDS specification is not supported in the current release.

API Documentation Terms

In the API documentation, the term module refers to a logical grouping of documentation and elements in the API.

Stereotypes

Commonly used stereotypes in the API documentation include the following.

Extensions

• <<eXtension>>
  • An RTI Connext product extension to the DDS standard specification.
  • The extension APIs complement the standard APIs specified by the OMG DDS specification. They are provided to improve product usability and enable access to product-specific features such as pluggable transports.

Experimental

• <<experimental>>
  • RTI Connext experimental features are used to evaluate new features and get user feedback.
  • These features are not guaranteed to be fully supported and might be implemented only of some of the programming languages supported bt RTI Connext
  • The functional APIs corresponding to experimental features can be distinguished from other APIs by the suffix '_exp'.
  • Experimental features may or may not appear in future product releases.
  • The name of the experimental features APIs will change if they become officially supported. At the very least the suffix '_exp' will be removed.
  • Experimental features should not be used in production.

Types

• <<interface>>
  • Pure interface type with no state.
  • Languages such as Java natively support the concept of an interface type, which is a collection of method signatures devoid of any dynamic state.
  • In C++, this is achieved via a class with all pure virtual methods and devoid of any instance variables (ie no dynamic state).
  • Interfaces are generally organized into a type hierarchy. Static typecasting along the interface type hierarchy is "safe" for valid objects.

• <<generic>>
  • A generic type is a skeleton class written in terms of generic parameters. Type-specific instantiations of such types are conventionally referred to in this documentation in terms of the hypothetical type "Foo"; for example: FooSeq, FooDataType, FooDataWriter, and FooDataReader.

• <<singleton>>
  • Singleton class. There is a single instance of the class.
  • Generally acccessed via a get_instance() static method.

Method Parameters

• <<in>>
  • An input parameter.

• <<out>>
  • An output parameter.

• <<inout>>
  • An input and output parameter.