Release 20th October 2025

https://www.cepheis.com/hiperspace/20251020

Overview

This release introduced the message element for client/server scenarios where you might want to run a query on a server and transfer only the final results to a client. This is especially useful for whole graph queries that select every element that is related to the subject node for a butterfly view.

Message

The HiLang Message page goes into detail about the structure of messages.. but it is worth referring to an example for clarity. The CustomerCube message takes a reference to a Customer and returns all the information need to display a hipercube in a Web Assembly browser client, transfered with Protobuf compression between client and server

message API.CustomerCube
( 
    Customer        : Acc.Customer #1
)
{
    CustomerTree    : List<Acc.Customer> #2,
    Sector          : List<Acc.Sector> #3,
    Accounts        : List<Acc.Account> #4 ,

    "Using the generated cube element from Transaction and its dimensions"
    Cube            : List<Acc.Transaction_Cube> #5,

    "Using the generated cube drilldown from cube"
    Drilldown       : List<Acc.Transaction_CubeDrillDown> #6
};

NB Cube : List<Acc.Transaction_Cube> is a physical element, generated from the Transaction @Fact property, and including the @Dimension {Customer, Account, Sector} and @Measure analysis properties

When the schema is compiled with HiLang, implementations are not provided for

namespace API
{
    public partial class CustomerCube : IMessage
    {
        public Task<IMessage> InvokeAsync(CancellationToken token = default)
        {
        }
        public async IAsyncEnumerable<IMessage> InvokeStreamAsync([EnumeratorCancellation]CancellationToken token = default)
        {
            yield return await InvokeAsync(token);
        }
    }
}

which must be added to the schema project to provide implementation for the server-side functions

HiperSpace

HiperSpace has two additional methods that transfer messages through the layers of Hiperspaces, until a server SubSpace is found that will execute the message, and return the value

       public virtual Task<byte[]> InvokeAsync(byte[] key, CancellationToken token = default) => Task.FromResult(key);
       public virtual IAsyncEnumerable<byte[]> InvokeStreamAsync(byte[] key, CancellationToken token = default) => new byte[][] { key }.ToAsyncEnumerable();

SubSpace

SubSpace has the above functions (because they also implement HiperSpace), plus the domain specific functions needed for code like `var msg = await space.InvokeAsync(new CustomerCube ); to be executed on a client.

       public async Task<TMessage> InvokeAsync<TMessage>(TMessage item, CancellationToken token = default) 
           where TMessage : class, IMessage
       public async IAsyncEnumerable<TMessage> InvokeStreamAsync<TMessage>(TMessage item, [EnumeratorCancellation]CancellationToken token = default)

There are no equivalent synchronous messages handling functions because the only reason for using messages is to perform query processing on a server, and Blazor client cannot use any blocking operations.

With this release the obsolete function public abstract object? Get(string sid); has been removed, and Get<object?>(string sid) should be used instead.

Domain implementation

The Domain implementation of SubSpace (generated by HiLang) includes logic to execute the message logic in the first domain Space that has the RemoteLabel set to true. Generated HiLang schema will not compile until the InvokeAsync and InvokeStreamAsync functions have been added by the implementor.

HiLang

HiLang segment (many) and aspect (optionally one) can be applied to any entity to extend the definition of the entity with information that is versioned separately. Consider the example of TOGAF where every entity type can include any number of Gaps each of which have separate storage and references to their owner with navigation from the owner using the Gap property.

HiLang Generates {ServiceGap, DriverGap, ActorGap, FunctionGap, CapabilityGap, ProductGap, GoalGap, ObjectiveGap, MeasureGap, ActivityGap, EventGap, ProcessGap, ControlGap, ValueStreamGap, CourseOfActionGap, EntityGap, LogicalGap, PhysicalGap, SystemGap, ComponentGap, DeployedGap, PlatformGap, HostGap, InstanceGap} to provide storage for entity specific versions of the Gap, and View to bring togther every different implementation for query together.

When segment/aspect is only used in a single comtext, we can end-up with very long segment implementation names like CustomerAccountTransaction when Customer has many Account segments , which has many Transaction segments. To minimise the generated classes, an additional step has been added to HiLang to remove the generated prefix when a segment is only used in one context.

This version changes CustomerAccountTransaction to Transaction. If we subsequently need to add the segment to another entity, the prefix would be added back to distinguish different owners of Transaction.

NB Hiperspace does not store the name of the element with every instance (only the #id is stored), so any change will be transparent.

LatestSpace

LatestSpace is a specialisation fo HeapSpace, that discards history to reduce memory usage. the main use-case is with Blazor Web-Assembly clients that have no interest in the history of an Element, but need to hold the durable representation for synchronization at the end of a session.

References

References to other libraries have been updated

NuGet

Release 23rd October 2025 Release 20th October 2025 Release 23rd September 2025