What is Message passing? How are objects interacted with one another?

Message Passing

Message passing is a communication paradigm in distributed computing where processes communicate with each other by sending and receiving messages. Processes have their own private memory and do not share memory with other processes. Communication between processes is done by sending messages to each other via channels.

How Objects Interacted with One Another

In a message passing system, objects interact with one another by sending and receiving messages. A message is a data structure that contains the information that is being communicated, such as the identity of the sender, the identity of the receiver, and the data itself. Messages are sent over channels, which are logical connections between two objects.

When an object sends a message, it places the message in the channel associated with the receiver. The receiver then reads the message from the channel and processes it. Messages can be sent in either a synchronous or asynchronous manner.

Synchronous Message Passing

In synchronous message passing, the sender waits for the receiver to acknowledge receipt of the message before continuing execution. This ensures that the message is received by the receiver before the sender proceeds.

Asynchronous Message Passing

In asynchronous message passing, the sender does not wait for the receiver to acknowledge receipt of the message before continuing execution. This allows the sender to continue execution without being blocked by the receiver. However, asynchronous message passing can lead to messages being lost if the receiver is not ready to receive them.

Advantages of Message Passing

Message passing has a number of advantages over other communication paradigms, such as shared memory. These advantages include:

• Scalability: Message passing is a scalable communication paradigm that can be used to build distributed systems with a large number of processes.
• Reliability: Message passing is a reliable communication paradigm that ensures that messages are delivered to their destination.
• Security: Message passing can be used to implement secure communication systems by encrypting messages before they are sent.

Disadvantages of Message Passing

Message passing also has a number of disadvantages, such as:

• Overhead: Message passing can introduce overhead due to the need to copy messages between processes and the need to handle the synchronization of messages.
• Complexity: Message passing systems can be complex to design and implement.
• Latency: Message passing can introduce latency due to the time it takes for messages to travel between processes.