Server configuration - processes

Your application must have a -processes.xml file. This contains the configuration of each module in the application (Data Server, Request Server, Event Handler, etc). It is created automatically when you start a new Genesis project using GenX CLI tool, but you might well want to update it - and you certainly want to take a good look at it.

Every process (module) in your application needs to have an entry in this -processes.xml file. If you add a new process, then you must add its details to this file. Otherwise, it will simply not be part of the built application.

The generated file

When you run the command genesisInstall, the platform takes your processes.xml file and adds details from internal Genesis files (for example, auth-processes.xml) to create a new processes.xml file in the generated folder.

It is the version in the generated folder that the platform uses to control its actions (such as executing a startServer, or a killProcess command). So, if you make any changes to your process.xml, make sure you run genesisInstall afterwards.

Below is an example of a generated processes.xml file for an application that has:

• a Data Server
• a Request Server
• an Event Handler
• a Consolidator
• a Streamer and Streamer Client

You can see that this file has separate code blocks for each of the application's processes. Each code block has tags that define the characteristics of the process.

<processes>
  <process name="POSITION_APP_DATASERVER">
    <groupId>POSITION_APP</groupId>
    <start>true</start>
    <options>-Xmx256m</options>
    <module>genesis-pal-dataserver</module>
    <package>global.genesis.dataserver.pal</package>
    <script>position_app-dataserver.kts</script>
    <description>Displays real-time details</description>
    <language>pal</language>
    <classpath>quickfixj-core-*.jar</classpath>
  </process>
  <process name="POSITION_APP_REQUEST_SERVER">
    <groupId>POSITION_APP</groupId>
    <start>true</start>
    <options>-Xmx256m</options>
    <module>genesis-pal-requestserver</module>
    <package>global.genesis.requestreply.pal</package>
    <script>position_app-reqrep.kts</script>
    <description>Server one-shot requests for details</description>
    <language>pal</language>
  </process>
  <process name="POSITION_APP_EVENT_HANDLER">
    <groupId>POSITION_APP</groupId>
    <start>true</start>
    <options>-Xmx256m -DRedirectStreamsToLog=true</options>
    <module>genesis-pal-eventhandler</module>
    <package>global.genesis.eventhandler.pal</package>
    <script>position_app-eventhandler.kts</script>
    <description>Handles events</description>
    <classpath>position_app-messages*,position_app-eventhandler*</classpath>
    <language>pal</language>
  </process>
  <process name="POSITION_APP_CONSOLIDATOR">
      <groupId>POSITION_APP</groupId>
      <start>true</start>
      <options>-Xmx256m -DRedirectStreamsToLog=true  -DXSD_VALIDATE=false</options>
      <module>consolidator2</module>
      <package>global.genesis.consolidator2</package>
      <config>position_app-consolidator2.xml</config>
      <loggingLevel>INFO,DATADUMP_OFF</loggingLevel>
      <dependency>POSITION_APP_EVENT_HANDLER</dependency>
  </process>
  <process name="POSITION_APP_STREAMER_CLIENT">
      <start>true</start>
      <options>-Xmx128m -DXSD_VALIDATE=false</options>
      <module>genesis-pal-streamerclient</module>
      <package>global.genesis.streamerclient.pal</package>
      <script>position_app-streamer-client.kts</script>
  </process>
  <process name="POSITION_APP_STREAMER">
      <start>true</start>
      <options>-Xmx128m -DXSD_VALIDATE=false</options>
      <module>genesis-pal-streamer</module>
      <package>global.genesis.streamer.pal</package>
      <script>position_app-streamer.kts</script>
      <configOverridesFile>/home/genesis/appstreamer.properties</configOverridesFile>
  </process>
</processes>

Tags

For each process, the tags define key information. Let's look at the tags that are available.

Tag	Description	Optional	Default
dependency	Defines a comma-separated list of processes that the current process is dependent on. In the above example, the POSITION_APP_CONSOLIDATOR process will only start once the POSITION_APP_EVENT_HANDLER process is running.	Yes	None
loggingLevel	Defines the default log level for the process, which is based on slf4j levels. It also accepts DATADUMP_ON/DATADUMP_OFF to declare that you would like to log all the received/sent network messages.	Yes	None
classpath	Defines additional jar files that are needed by the microservices. The filenames must be provided in a comma-separated list; all files in the list must be located in a lib or bin folder for the relevant Genesis microservice (module). You can use wild cards in your specification. This can be seen in the classpath for the POSITION_APP_DATASERVER and POSITION_APP_EVENT_HANDLER configuration in the example above.	Yes	None
start	Defines whether the process needs to be started when the startServer command is executed, and whether to show this process in the mon command display.	Yes	true
options	Defines any JVM arguments that you want to apply when running the process.	Yes	None
package	Defines the package the process should refer to. All Genesis source code is contained in packages. So, in the example above, the configuration for the POSITION_APP_STREAMER process points to the source code in the package global.genesis.streamer.pal. Multiple package scans need to be comma-separated.	No	None
module	Defines where in the package (see above) the process should look for its binaries - base jar files. In the above example, the configuration of the POSITION_APP_EVENT_HANDLER has a module tag that points to genesis-pal-eventhandler. This finds every jar file with the text genesis-pal-eventhandler and gets all the relevant classpath dependencies.	No	None
config	If the process has a process-config.kts file, you must specify it using this tag.	No	None
language	Defines what language the script is using. The default value is groovy. Accepted values are pal, groovy, R.	No	None
scheduleRestart	Controls what the platform does if the process dies unexpectedly. This must be a boolean value; if set to true; the process will be restarted automatically.	Yes	false
groupId	If you have created groups of processes, use this tag to specify which groupID the process belongs to. See below for more details.	Yes	application name
description	Provides a simple description of the process.	No	None
primaryOnly	Specifies that the process can only run on the primary node in a cluster. It requires a boolean value: true or false.	Yes	false
arguments	Some processes always need arguments on start-up. Use this tag to specify a file with the relevant arguments. This file overrides any relevant settings on the system-definitions file.	Yes	None

Process groups

Groups give you a convenient way of starting multiple processes on the server with a single click. The commands startGroup and killGroup use the groupId to start or kill groups of processes.

By default, all your main processes (such as Event Handler, Data Server and Request Server) are given a groupID that matches your application name. That means that they all belong to the same group by default.

All authorisation processes are grouped into a single group with the groupID AUTH.

To create a new group, simply change the groupID of the processes that you want to be in the group. For example, if you want to group your Data Server and Request Server in a group called DATA, just change the groupID for those processes to DATA.