(short answer) "An application server that efficiently integrates with many languages, many databases, and many messaging buses in a way that is both scalable and fault-tolerant."
(shorter answer) "A rock-solid transaction processing system for flexible software development."
(shortest answer) "A Cloud at the lowest level."
Software developers that do not want to get locked into corporate vendors or frameworks that push for perpetual commercial support or licenses.
CloudI makes software fault-tolerant and scalable, utilizing Erlang, even if the software is legacy source code. CloudI mitigates software development risk (delays or failures) when making software scale in non-Erlang programming languages, or during a conversion of a software system (fully or partially) to the Erlang programming language.
The CloudI API provides a simple set of functions for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) development in any supported language (currently C++/C, Java, Python, Ruby, and Erlang):
- subscribe, unsubscribe
- send_async, send_sync, mcast_async (mcast_async == publish)
- recv_async
- return, forward
External communication that needs to scale (beyond 10,000 connections) can use an internal CloudI service (implemented in Erlang) which may do processing for one or more external CloudI services (implemented C++/C, Java, Python, and/or Ruby)
Even if external communication doesn't need to scale, private cloud computing tasks (number crunching) can gain fault-tolerance and internal system scalability within CloudI.
Please see the FAQ for more details.
The default CloudI configuration runs many tests that can be used as examples of CloudI integration (see src/cloudi.conf.in).
- Erlang >= R14B02 (erlang/Ubuntu, erlang/macports)
- C++ (g++/Ubuntu, libstdcxx/macports)
- Java (default-jdk/Ubuntu, (built-in)/OSX)
- Python >= 2.7.0 (python+python-dev/Ubuntu, python27/macports)
- Ruby >= 1.9.0 (ruby1.9/Ubuntu, ruby19/macports)
- GNU MP library (libgmp3-dev/Ubuntu, gmp/macports)
- boost >= 1.36.0 (libboost-thread-dev+libboost-dev/Ubuntu, boost/macports)
Optional (installed/linked statically, automatically):
- ZeroMQ >= 2.x.x (or 3.x.x) (use the "--with-zeromq" configure flag)
For configuration options, see FAQ: 3.2 - Installation Options.
./configure
make
make install
Within the installation directory the "bin/cloudi" script controls CloudI.
To start CloudI:
bin/cloudi start
To stop CloudI:
bin/cloudi stop
Integration points:
- CloudI API (See src/api/README)
- HTTP with cloudi_job_http_misultin or cloudi_job_http_cowboy
- ZeroMQ with cloudi_job_zeromq
- Supported databases
- CouchDB with cloudi_job_db_couchdb
- memcached with cloudi_job_db_memcached
- MySQL with cloudi_job_db_mysql
- PostgreSQL with cloudi_job_db_pgsql
- Tokyo Tyrant with cloudi_job_db_tokyotyrant
Dynamic configuration uses the CloudI Job API (See src/job_api/README)
Michael Truog (mjtruog [at] gmail (dot) com)