Always Make Anonymous Requests

To design your application to be completely open, you want the requests to be completely anonymous. That is, the requesting process has no knowledge of which tool instance — or even which tool type — will perform the requested operation. If the requests are sent to a specific process, you unnecessarily restrict how users or potential message recipients can utilize their resources. If the requests are sent to a specific tool type, you unnecessarily restrict the other kinds of tools that can interact with your tool.

You want your message to describe the operation being requested or the event being reported. You do not want your message to describe the process that should receive the message. The less specific knowledge each tool encodes about the tools with which it will interact, the more flexible the overall system is for the user.

For more information about open protocols, see “Designing and Writing a ToolTalk Procedural Protocol” (Sun Part Number 801-3592-01).