Out-of-band and in-band partitions

An interactive application has a dual functionality: first it interfaces with the user handling event-driven programming associated with the user interface and the response times have to be in the order of hundreds of milliseconds; second it handles the data processing according to the domain requirements

User actions are non-deterministic so user interface code has to cover many possibilities. Data processing has strict requirements and the sequence of operations (algorithm) is known before hand. Human users require response in the order of hundreds of milliseconds but applications emphasize performance that is irrelevant for the user interface. Generally, a large fraction of the running time is spent waiting for user input. The user interface code and data processing code are part of the same application and they collaborate with each other.

The solution is to organize the application into two different partitions:

• Out-of-band partition: typically responsible for user interaction.
• In-band partition: it contains the code that performs data processing. This partition does not take into account any aspects of user interaction