I have an HTTP Server Service application which has its own logging mechanism. It’s written in Delphi. I would like to provide a way for multiple clients to connect to this service and get a real-time update of the log. The log in the service moves rather fast, there’s a lot of things to log. There may be up to 50 messages within 1 second at times. The existing log which is already implemented is not saved, it’s only kept in the memory of the server service – where I will need to distribute it to any client which needs it. Once all clients have a log message, it should be deleted.

I intend to use HTTP to “ask” the server for the log, and respond with an XML packet. The connections are not keep-alive. The only problem is, the server should only send the client those log records which it needs, not everything. I have no way of the server pushing the log to the clients in real-time, so each client needs to repeatedly ask the server for the latest log records. This HTTP Server is very lightweight, and there is no session management. There isn’t even any type of authentication.

The only way I see is for a client to register its self on the server, and whenever a log is issued on the server, it creates a copy of the log for each client, where each client has a log queue (string list). However, suppose there are 100 clients connected and expecting to receive this log. That means the server must create 100 copies of each log, add this log to the end of each client log queue, and wait for the client to request it. At that point, when the server replies with the XML log, it should flush (delete) whatever’s in the queue. I’m worried however that this could cause memory issues. Each client log queue might get 100 log messages before the client requests the latest logs.

How should I go about doing this in the fastest way possible without hindering the performance of the server? I’m trying to avoid having to create a copy of each log for each client.