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Corba language neutrality gone?
Linuk writes "Here's an interesting article, CORBA 3.0 POSTMORTEM, about the OMG's adoption of EJB as its eagerly awaited component spec. It argues that OMG has now given up on its vendor neutral and language independent pretentions. "
This whole issue of distributed objects and objected oriented
hype is irrlevant to the real world of appliations and systems and
software development in the GUN-Linux-"Free Software" world
that most readers here dwell in, except to the degree that a few
projects have partially (and really, very, very partially) used some
aspects of CORBA or attempted to use CORBA for object
integration. Notably GNOME and KDE. That implementation
will always remain, at best, partial and eventually will phase out.
This does not mean that GNOME and KDE will phase out,
however. Developers who actually have to write apps despise
CORBA and for good reason.
Another poster noted that CORBA and the "object model"
of development is dead, but that the horse is still twitching.
So long as the horse is still twitching, the hype and buzz will
be good for one's career in the proprietary corporate world,
particularly in IBM centric shops needing mid-level integration
using IBM tools and of course in MS shops using exclusively
MS platforms with COM as the integration method and in Sun
shops using proprietary SUN unixes and proprietary database
systems and proprietary SUN./IBM Java.
CORBA and its many variants (including JavaBeans and all
the variations of Microsofts's COM, really) is too unwieldy and
complex. These variations of CORBA are inherently inconsistent
and often incompatible in practice. Partly this is intentional, as each
vendor wants to lock in customers and developers. But mostly
it is because CORBA and COM and SOM and Java the whole
works is a technology which is alread passe and lifeless and ugly
and unwieldy. I am speaking from experience here having worked
with IBM"s SOM years ago when it was held out as the
final solution for object modeling at the system level. Well,
that was abandoned for CORBA. CORBA is being abandoned
for Java, and on and on with the hype.
It's important to understand the role of these technologies and
their purpose. Their only purpose, really, is to provide a framework
wherein vendors can "distribute" software or code from owned
"servers" to paying "clients". Sort of like renting software. That
is it. There is nothing more to it. The rest is utter hype.
Does this mean that I am opposed to object oriented software
development? Not at all. I love C++ for gui development, for
music software, and much more, and I use it. I like Python
a lot even though I've not used it much to date, and Lisp is the
grandfather of it all -what I stareted with. However, at the system
level I do not feel that the kind of object integration hyped
by these vendors (and it really is the vendors, not the
programmers, who hype it) is desirable - especially in the free
software world, which holds the key to the future and is where
all of the energy and "light" is right now.
The future is in using simple scripting languages and XML and
so forth in combination with solid systems and open data
formats wherein the *DATA*, not code, is the medium of integration
between applications and systems. Nothing can be simpler, and
nothing else really works, in the long run. Sounds too simple
to be true, but the truth is better than marketing hype by bold
faced liars intent only on advancing their own careers. XML and
its ilk is the future, not CORBA.
Scripting languages which allow integration and open protocols
for networking are already here. Some of this may have object
oriented features, which is fine and dandy. But, that is vastly
different in nature from "system level object integration" which
really means, beneath all the hype, only one thing - let our
proprietary object model integrate your system. We will rent
you code which we will distribute to you for a price. This code can
run your toaster, your tv and your home computer. Leave the
driving to us.
We read a lot these days about Linux meeting the challenge of
enterprise level. Ho, hum. What a boring topic. "Enterprise"
means "corporate". Linux and free software (GNU, etc) was not
created to serve faceless, lifeless, anti-god corporations but to
serve people. To empower people to take control of their own
software or at least not to be controlled in merely using software.
Translated to the level of concrete applications, this means
continuing to develop good apps using open protocols and to
make source code available, object oriented or not, and to use
integration tools provided with unix (and GNU equivalents which
are often better) to "layer" small tools and apps to create
subsystems for any purpose - even for corporate enterprise.
But, we play by our rules, not the rules of Java as defined by
Sun or COM as defined by MS. Above all, keep it simple.
a programmer - over 40
He basically claims that OMG is giving up language neutrality. Here is a quote from the OMG press release that he is supposedly commenting on:
The press release is simply a joint announcement from Sun and OMG announcing that there will be a close collaboration between EJB and CORBA. Importantly, EJB will be supporting the core of CORBA's network communication model: IIOP, which pretty much guarantees that you can write your objects in any language and on any platform, as long as you can make TCP sockets.
I must say that this guy's experience is really, really, far from my own and that ceretainly shapes his very, very different interpretation of this press release. He says that he sees half of all programmers who are working with object integration programming with VB. I certainly don't.
I think people should read the OMG release themselves and draw their own conclusions, but I read it as a commitment from Sun to cooperate with OMG to come up with a vendor neutral object specification ... something to address the fundamental questions of vendor and platform dependence raised by Microsoft's DOM.
Posted by surfside:
Roger Sessions originally worked on the CORBA Persistance standard, which was subsequently rejected by the OMG. Ever since that unfortunate mishap, he has decided to side with Microsoft and print very anti-CORBA messages on his ObjectWatch site (read some of his other articles). Be aware that all he does is Microsoft/COM now and that many of his claims for COM and COM+ are speculative and somewhat misleading (at best).
I have worked with both CORBA and COM. I have had to explain the differences in the object models over and over, and I have developed in both environments. COM works well if you are a Microsoft shop, with all Microsoft desktops, and you only run on a Microsoft LAN, interfacing to a Microsoft database. CORBA works if you have a distributed heterogeneous network across multiple platforms, and multiple languages.
'nuff said.
The CORBA specification has long lacked the ability to pass objects by value rather than referrence. By creating this component specification, CORBA gains a much needed ability to pass complex objects between ORB's beyond arrays and structs. Remember that OMG's goal is to create a neutral platform for network programming between platform implementations. XML doesn't do the trick because unless the embedded objects are scripts or even java binaries, they are still tied to a platform.
The EJB component specification is AN implementation of the specification, it certainly allows other bindings to be implemented in the future. Without this spec, CORBA will always lack the few advantages that DCOM has by allowing binaries to be passed around and used by other ORB's. The objects will of course need to be platform-independant. If they're not java objects, then the OMG would have to create some platform indepent binary specification, thus duplicating Sun's efforts with java.
1. The deadline for CORBA Component model proposals isn't until August 1999, so no decision has been made.
2. The OMG press release doesn't say what Mr. Sessions implies. It certainly doesn't say that vendor/language neutrality is being abandonded for the Component Model. It's basically just says EJB and CORBA work real good together. Read it for yourself here
3. And finally, from ObjectWatch's home page: "We specialize in offering training and
consulting on Microsoft's distributed component architectures"