OTP Express

Target Audience: This course is aimed at experienced Erlang Software Developers and Designers who need to understand Behaviours.
Prerequisites: Existing experience using Sequential and Concurrent Programming with Erlang on projects.
Objectives:
• Use existing Design Patterns supported by Erlang and OTP.
• Apply Generic Behaviours, Finite State Machines and Event handler Patterns.
• Use the Supervisor and Application Behaviours Patterns.
• Write your own Design Patterns.
• Structure large Erlang based systems.
Goal: Design fault-tolerant systems.
Duration: Three days
Description: You will learn the prevailing Erlang Design Patterns called OTP Behaviours. We will cover Erlang Design Patterns such as Generic Behaviours, Finite State Machines and Event Handlers. You will also learn how to develop systems using the Supervisor and Application Behaviours Patterns, so you can construct maintainable and fault tolerant software. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to extend it all, by devising your very own Behaviours.

Course Contents:

• Introduction 
  
• Records and Funs 
  
• Behaviours 
  
• Generic Servers 
  
• Finite State Machines 
  
• Supervisors 
  
• Event Handlers
• Applications 
  
• Special Processes
• System Principles 
  
• System Architecture Support Library 
  

Introduction 
This section introduces the need and advantages of using middleware in the developmentof massively concurrent, distributed, fault tolerant real time systems in Erlang. It looks at Erlang's evolution, and how it helped form OTP. Further this gives an overview of the components that make up OTP. They are Erlang, a set of behaviours, and rules and design principles to use them. OTP comes with many ready built applications and tools useful for large scale software design. They are introduced in this section. 

Records and Funs
Records and funs are used extensively within OTP and a refresher of the concepts and use is provided in this section. 

Behaviours 
Erlang processes display similar properties. In the Open Telecom platforms, these properties have been abstracted in a group of generic library modules, also called OTP behaviours. This section introduces the concept of behaviours, and through examples of abstraction, shows their need and advantages. 

Generic Servers 
Generic servers implement the Client-Server behaviours in OTP. This section introduces the most commonly used behaviour in Erlang based applications. 

Finite State Machines 
The finite state machines behaviour in Erlang is used to implement state transitions in processes based on incoming events. This behaviour is commonly used when implementing protocol stacks. 

Supervisors 
Supervisors are a behaviour whose only task is to start other Erlang behaviours and monitor them for abnormal termination. This is a vital section in understanding start and restart strategies in Erlang. 

Event Handlers 
Erlang has ready built event managers. Event handlers are behaviours who subscribe to events sent to specific managers, allowing several actions to take place based on one single event. Event handlers can be changed on the fly, as well as added or deleted from a specific manager. 

Applications 
This section introduces the application behaviour, used for packaging Erlang resources. Resources can vary from libraries to process clusters, and can be configured to run on a single processor or be distributed on a set of nodes. 

Special Processes 
There will be times where we want to implement our own behaviours, or for efficiency reason, use simple Erlang processes. This section looks behind the scenes on how behaviours are implemented, and explains how to implement your own. 

System_Principles 
The System Principles section describes how Erlang applications are coupled together in a release and started as a whole. Sections include creating release files, bundling up the software including the virtual machine, and running Erlang on target and embedded hosts. 

System Architecture Support Library 
The System Architecture Support Library was used in the first release of OTP to package tools needed for large scale software design. This section covers error logging, the report browser, alarm handler and overload module.

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Teacher(s):

Robert Virding

Robert Virding recently joined Erlang Solutions Ltd as Principal Language Expert. While at Ericsson AB, Robert Virding was one of the original members of the Ericsson Computer Science Lab, and co-inventor of the Erlang language. He took part in the original system design and contributed much of the original libraries, as well as to the current compiler. While at the lab he also did a lot of work on the implementation of logic and functional languages and on garbage collection. He has also worked as an entrepreneur and was one of the co-founders of one of the first Erlang startups (Bluetail). Robert Virding also worked a number of years at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) Modelling and Simulations Group. He co-authored the first book (Prentice-Hall) on Erlang, and is regularly invited to teach and present throughout the world.

Interview with The Bitsource on What is OTP