Concepts
Swim unifies the traditionally disparate roles of database, message broker, job manager, and application server, into a few simple constructs: Web Agents, Lanes, Links, and Recon.
Web Agents
Swim applications consist of interconnected, distributed objects, called Web Agents. Each Web Agent has URI address, like a REST endpoint. But unlike RESTful Web Services, Web Agents are stateful, and accessed via streaming APIs.
Lanes
If Web Agents are distributed objects, then lanes serve as the properties and methods of those objects. Lanes come in many flavors, value lanes, map lanes, command lanes, and join lanes, to name a few. Many lanes are internally persistent, acting like encapsulated database tables.
Links
Distributed objects need a way to communicate. Links establishes active references to lanes of Web Agents, transparently streaming bi-directional state changes to keep all parts of an application in sync, without the overhead of queries or remote procedure calls.
Recon
Communication only works if all parties understands one another. Swim natively speaks a universal, structured data language, called Recon. A superset of JSON, XML, Protocol Buffers, and more, Recon naturally translates into many tongues.
Continue reading to learn more about Web Agents, Lanes, Links, and Recon. Or dive into the tutorials to learn by doing.