OTP - The technology from Ericsson
The open telecom platform (OTP) is a development system platform for building telecommunications applications, and a control system platform for running them. The platform, whose aim is to reduce time to market, enables designers to build – from standard, commercially available computer platforms – a highly-productive development environment that is based on the programming language Erlang.
Description
The open telecom platform is a development system platform for building, and a control system platform for running, telecommunications applications. However, the OTP is not a monolithic platform, but is made up of sets of tools and building blocks, which include:
Description
The open telecom platform is a development system platform for building, and a control system platform for running, telecommunications applications. However, the OTP is not a monolithic platform, but is made up of sets of tools and building blocks, which include:
 |
OTP Overview
The open telecom platform (OTP) enables designers to build and run telecommunications applications on a broad range of standard, commercially available hardware and software platforms. The OTP also allows designers who program in C, C++, Java and other languages to integrate sourced components - protocol stacks, APIs, I/O units and drivers - into their applications.
The OTP comes with an exhaustive collection of tools and building blocks and meets all basic telecommunications requirements. It has a real-time distributed control system that is fault-tolerant, and that can handle software upgrades while it is running. In addition, the OTP can easily be ported to several different commercial operating systems.
The open telecom platform (OTP) enables designers to build and run telecommunications applications on a broad range of standard, commercially available hardware and software platforms. The OTP also allows designers who program in C, C++, Java and other languages to integrate sourced components - protocol stacks, APIs, I/O units and drivers - into their applications.
The OTP comes with an exhaustive collection of tools and building blocks and meets all basic telecommunications requirements. It has a real-time distributed control system that is fault-tolerant, and that can handle software upgrades while it is running. In addition, the OTP can easily be ported to several different commercial operating systems.
Why Erlang? – Erlang Highligths
- Declarative
It is a functional programming language with high abstraction level, pattern matching and concise readable programs.
- Concurrency
Erlang has extremely lightweight processes whose memory requirements can vary dynamically. Processes have no shared memory and communicate by asynchronous message passing. Erlang supports applications with very large numbers of concurrent processes. No requirements for concurrency are placed on the host operating system.
- Soft real-time
Erlang supports programming "soft" real-time systems, which require response times in the order of milliseconds. Long garbage collection delays in such systems are unacceptable, so Erlang uses incremental garbage collection techniques.
- Robustness
Erlang has various error detection primitives which can be used to structure fault-tolerant systems. For example, processes can monitor the status and activities of other processes, even if these processes are executing on other nodes. Processes in a distributed system can be configured to fail-over to other nodes in case of failures and automatically migrate back to recovered nodes.
- Distribution
Erlang is designed to be run in a distributed environment. An Erlang virtual machine is called an Erlang node. A distributed Erlang system is a network of Erlang nodes (typically one per processor). An Erlang node can create parallel processes running on other nodes, which perhaps use other operating systems. Processes residing on different nodes communicate in exactly the same way as processes residing on the same node.
- Hot code loading
Many systems cannot be stopped for software maintenance. Erlang allows program code to be changed in a running system. Old code can be phased out and replaced by new code. During the transition, both old code and new code can coexist. It is thus possible to install bug fixes and upgrades in a running system without disturbing its operation.
- Incremental code loading
Users can control in detail how code is loaded. In embedded systems, all code is usually loaded at boot time. In development systems, code is loaded when it is needed, even when the system is running. If testing uncovers bugs, only the buggy code need be replaced.
- External interfaces
Erlang processes communicate with the outside world using the same message passing mechanism as used between Erlang processes. This mechanism is used for communication with the host operating system and for interaction with programs written in other languages. If required for reasons of efficiency, a special version of this concept allows e.g. C programs to be directly linked into the Erlang runtime system.
- Portability
It supports heterogeneous networks as Erlang runs on any UNIX, Windows, VxWorks and other operative systems.
Learn more about Erlang on http://www.erlang.org