Operators

The main concept in the RtBot architecture is that of an operator. An operator it’s simply a computational unit that takes a message as input, transforms it and produces messages as output. Operators assume they will receive messages with increasing timestamps, this is, ordered in time.

Operators can be connected with other operators, in a directed way, such that one operator can have many children operators. Operator have ports on it, which control the incoming and outgoing traffic from and to the operator. More specifically, operators are connected by creating a connection between some outbound port on the parent operator and some inbound port on the child operator. Data send to outbound ports will be then sent to all the child operators connected to that port, and it will be received in the inbound port specified by the connection. There may exist several connection between two operator, as long as the combination of outbound and inbound port is unique.

Operators may change the throughput of the stream they receive, producing any number of messages, or none, per each message it receives. In this sense they are also flow controllers, deciding when and what to forward to its children operators.