Marshalling code for mapping C-structs to IDL structs is trivial. However, to convert a data object that uses inheritence into IDL structs is more difficult.
Programmers are faced with two alternatives:
1. use structs in the IDL, and write marshalling code to convert the object hierarchy into structs. This is certainly do-able, but ugly: code needs to be changed whenever the data object changes.
2. serialize the data object into a byte array (e.g. using Java serialization), and pass this as a sequence of bytes. This is unsatisfactory because (a) the IDL interface becomes meaningless and (b) it makes the IDL language dependent.
IMHO, the former approach is too painful to deal with, which is why I think it makes sense to explore language dependent alternatives to IDL.
Marshalling data over IDL has been a real handicap for CORBA: C-structs just aren't flexible enough. From what I know, COM is no better in this regard either.
Java and CORBA have some great features: however, it makes a lot of sense to drop CORBA's language-inflexibility and RMI's inscaleability in favour of CORBA/EJB.
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Marshalling code for mapping C-structs to IDL structs is trivial. However, to convert a data object that uses inheritence into IDL structs is more difficult.
Programmers are faced with two alternatives:
1. use structs in the IDL, and write marshalling code to convert the object hierarchy into structs. This is certainly do-able, but ugly: code needs to be changed whenever the data object changes.
2. serialize the data object into a byte array (e.g. using Java serialization), and pass this as a sequence of bytes. This is unsatisfactory because (a) the IDL interface becomes meaningless and (b) it makes the IDL language dependent.
IMHO, the former approach is too painful to deal with, which is why I think it makes sense to explore language dependent alternatives to IDL.
It come as no surprise that out of the 1,500 people who went to hear Roger Sessions, 50% were VB programmers, and only 8% Java.
If James Gosling (say) had conducted a similar experiment, I suspect the numbers would be somewhat different...
Yes!
Marshalling data over IDL has been a real handicap for CORBA: C-structs just aren't flexible enough. From what I know, COM is no better in this regard either.
Java and CORBA have some great features: however, it makes a lot of sense to drop CORBA's language-inflexibility and RMI's inscaleability in favour of CORBA/EJB.
... according to their web-site.
Surely some mistake?
Why draw the line at sed, awk, lex, yacc. What about an implementation of perl - written in perl?
On second thoughts, this all sounds completely pointless...