What is the Serial Protocol Module Interface

The Serial Protocol Interface is the API that the Serial Communications Server uses to manage and communication with the Serial Protocol Modules.

There are two interfaces which make up the Serial Protocol Module Interface. These interfaces are the Serial Protocol Factory and the Serial Service Provider.

Serial Protocol Factory

Serial protocol modules are DLLs with a single entry point which returns a factory object. The factory object is capable of creating one or more objects that actually implement serial services. The factory object is known as the Serial protocol factory.

The Serial Communications Server calls the Serial protocol factory to create serial service providers. The Serial protocol factory is derived from the CSerial class.

Serial Protocol Information

Serial protocol information specifies information about the ports of the serial protocol module, for example name and number. A serial protocol module provides protocol information to the server.

The serial protocol information is provided to the client by RCommServ::GetPortInfo(). The Serial Protocol module uses the function derived from CSerial::Info() to provide the Serial protocol information to the Serial Communications Server. The information is provided in an object of type TSerialInfo.

Serial Service Provider

The Serial Service Provider defines an interface that represents a port, with functions corresponding to the port interface provided to clients by the Serial Communications Server Client Side (RComm) API. A Serial Protocol Module implements the interface to access the hardware ports for its protocol.

The serial service provider interface is provided by CPort.