Because DODS uses a communication protocol (http) that does not maintain state information about the link between two processes, these connections are virtual, and all the information about them is maintainted by the client. The toolkit contains two classes to help clients manage connections to one or more DODS servers. One class, Connect stores information used when a connection is established. It also allows a program to provide local access to data (without a DODS data server).
The second network class of the DODS Toolkit, Connections,
manages instances of the Connect class. It provides a
mechanism for the client libraries to pass back to user programs the
type of object (such as int, opaque pointer, ...) they expect and
then to use one of those objects to access the correct instance of
Connect. Connections is a template class. That is, a
client library uses the Connections class to make an array of
some sub-class of Connect.