Generic Payload Extensions

[sheridp@umich.edu]

Section 14.2 of the IEEE STD 1666-2011 states

Quote

It should be emphasized that although deriving a new class from the generic payload is possible, it is not the
recommended approach for interoperability

I am wondering why the extension mechanism is preferred since you could simple ignore the additional fields provided in a derived class.

[David Black]

Adding ignorable extensions and using the generic payload means that your TLM models would be reusable and interoperable with other TLM components that conform to the standard payload. By deriving a new class, you would make your model less usable in alternate systems.

 

[sheridp@umich.edu]

If a third party model is designed to take a tlm_generic_payload, and you derive from tlm_generic_payload, then it should handle your transaction object correctly, ignoring any additional fields that may be defined on the object.  If a target wants to make use of those additional fields, then it could dynamic_cast the tlm_generic_payload* to your derived type* (using C++ RTTI to ensure that it actually has a derived_type object) .   I understand that the standard was instead developed around extensions, but I'm wondering what was the motivation for going in this direction.

[Philipp A Hartmann]

You cannot bind sockets with different payload classes, as the interfaces are templated over the protocol traits, which include the payload and phase types.  So integrating this third-party model would require an adapter in your case.

Many use cases can be implemented with (ignorable) extensions, which will avoid this incompatibility and integration burden.   As a result, you don't have to write/use a custom adapters, interconnect models, tool integrations, etc. For maximum interoperability with models and tools, you want to follow the (base-protocol) conventions as closely as possible, even for custom protocols.

See the different TLM-2.0 compliance categories (IEEE 1666-2011, 9.1).

Hope that helps,
  Philipp

[sheridp@umich.edu]

I see, thanks for the info.

Regards,

Patrick