RAP Data Stream (RDS) templates are XML documents that represent the data structure of specific message types.
The Publisher API and the subscribers look up information about message formats in a set of RDS templates. The Publisher API uses templates to build the messages it sends to subscribers; subscribers use templates to parse messages and store them in a database.
The use of RDS templates minimizes the network bandwidth required for message transmission across the network. In addition, RDS templates increase processing efficiency by minimizing the number of CPU cycles needed to process each message.
Templates are located using a directory passed into the Publisher initialization method. All files that reside in that directory are read into memory. There may be one or more template files and each file may contain one or more message definitions. templateprocessor.a is the static library containing the Template Processing module that is shipped with Sybase RAP.
Publishers and subscribers can reside on different computers, but the same templates and same version of the software must be used by both the publisher and subscriber.
All message types must be expressed in the proper template format. A template specifies all fields included in a message, as well as the sequence of those fields. Each field within a message must be set in the order in which it is defined in the template.