%%$OpenXM: OpenXM/doc/issac2000/ox-messages.tex,v 1.6 2000/01/15 12:18:42 takayama Exp $

\section{OX messages}

An OX message for TCP/IP is a byte stream consisting of
a header and a body.
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
\hline
Header	& \hspace{10mm} Body \hspace{10mm} \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
The header consists of two signed 32 bit integers.
The first one is an OX tag 
and the second one is a serial number of the OX message.
%Negative numbers are expressed by the two's complement.
Several byte orders including the network byte order
are allowed and the byte order is determined as a part of
the establishment of a connection. See Section \ref{secsession} for details.

The OX messages are classified into three types:
DATA, COMMAND, and SPECIAL.
We have currently the following general tags for the OX messages.
\begin{verbatim}
#define	OX_COMMAND               513  // COMMAND
#define	OX_DATA	                 514  // DATA
#define OX_SYNC_BALL             515  // SPECIAL
#define OX_DATA_WITH_LENGTH      521  // DATA
#define OX_DATA_OPENMATH_XML     523  // DATA
#define OX_DATA_OPENMATH_BINARY  524  // DATA
#define OX_DATA_MP               525  // DATA
\end{verbatim}

New OX tags may be added.
The new tag should be classified into DATA or COMMAND.
For example, \verb+ OX_DATA_ASIR_LOCAL_BINARY +  was added recently
to send internal serialized objects of asir via the OpenXM protocol.
This is a tag classified to DATA.
See the web page of OpenXM to add a new tag \cite{openxm-web}.
Any server is a stack machine (see Section~\ref{sec:ox-stackmachines}
for detail).
{\it OX data} message sent by a client
are pushed onto the stack of a server. 
If the server gets an {\it OX command} message, then the server 
executes the command.

For example, the asir command {\tt ox\_push\_cmo(P,1)}
(push integer $1$ onto the server $P$)
sends an OX data message
{\tt (OX\_DATA,(CMO\_ZZ,1))} to the server $P$.
Here,
OX\_DATA stands for OX\_DATA header and 
{\tt (CMO\_ZZ,1)} is a body standing for $1$ expressed 
in the CMO data encoding format.
The server tranlates $(CMO\_ZZ, 1)$ to its own internal object fotrmat
for integers and pushs the object onto the stack.

%An OpenXM client admit that its own command sends some OX messages
%sequentially at once.  
%
%For example, the asir command
%{\tt ox\_execute\_string(P, "Print[x+y]")} sends an OX data message
%{\tt (OX\_DATA, (CMO\_STRING, "Print[x+y]"))} and an OX command message
%{\tt (OX\_COMMAND, (SM\_executeStringByLocalParser))} to an OpenXM
%server.
