C++ plug-ins vs. SSAS

Hi Lucas,

Please refer to the documentation that is available with FMS installation and could be lcoated at FMS-Install-fodler\documentation\flashmediaserver_3.5_plugin_dev.pdf. It sumamrizes few of the general tasks that is popularlry done using plug-ins. Also, SSAS has only certain and limited APIs exposed that won't be very helpful if you are in process of creating a large-scale complex application that has lot to do with file manipulations, reading and writing files, taking some action on play, pause, stop or disconnect events.I can enumerate few points that will help you to understand the use of plug-ins as compared to SSAS:

1- e.g. access plug-in runs with the edge process, so it can accept, reject or rewrite URIs before reaching the request to SSAS for making a decision.

2. Access plug-in is integrable with LDAP.

3. It can be used to redistribute incoming connections from an overloaded core to to the lesser busy core process.

4. Auth plug-in has notify and authorzie events that can be used to take various actions depending upon various events, like play, pause, stop, disconnect, swfverification and others. it can also be used to authorize seek event or dynamic stream transition that couldnt be done simply by using SSAS.

5. File plug-in lets you control how and from where the server reads contents from the file system. You can use it to grab files from a remote location over HTTP and serve them to clients. It also be used to retrieve external files for swfverification.

Hope this will help you to understand better the difference between wrting a SSAS and using file plug-in. Let me know if you have any more queries.