Re: [hybi] Subscription/topic confusion

[Tobias Oberstein <[e-mail]>]

Am 20.10.2015 um 17:43 schrieb Michal Fojtak:
> WAMP protocol defines two main mechanisms - RPC via registrations and
> calls, event distribution via subscribe/publish.
>
> Callee can register procedure and such a procedure becomes an object
> which is tracked internally by router. Router "is aware" of
> registrations. Caller can query registrations via meta API.
>
> HOWEVER
> This is not a story of other wamp entity - the topic. Topic as such is
> not stored anyware in the router. Router is not aware of them. Potential
> subscriber cannot query available topics. Ironically, you can query
> subscriptions. But unless somebody subscribes to it, the topic object
> exists only in publisher.
> It kind of contradicts the main advantage of having a central hub -
> router which is aware of all objects - procedures and topics.

The analogy is as follows:

callee registers a procedure at a router, which results in a "registration"

subscriber subscribes to a topic at a router, which results in a 
"subscription"

both registrations and subscriptions can be listed via the WAMP meta API

neither callers nor publishers are tracked at the router until there is 
an actual call from a caller, or an event published by a publisher.

neither callers nor publishers can be listed

>
> Would it be possible to "register" topics like we can register procedures?
> We can then get a list of topics. We can define and describe them. And
> other useful things.
>
> P.S.: The subscription id is quite confusing as well. It is not really
> subscription identification. Router creates this id when a first

Yes, it is. Please see below ..

> subscriber subscribes to the topic. If there was a topic then we would
> have topic id and many subscriber ids for each individual subscriber
> which models the situation more naturally.

The subscription ID identifies the subscription that is managed by the 
broker.

The topic being subscribed to is only _one_ part of a subscription. E.g. 
the matching strategy (eg exact-match vs prefix-match) is also part of 
the subscription.

There can be 2 subscriptions with the _same_ topic, but different 
matching policies.

In fact, separating "subscription" from "topic" was a major change we 
did when moving from WAMP v1 to v2.

/Tobias