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> From: I Find Karma <adam@cs.caltech.edu>
> To: resnick@interlog.com
> Subject: JoeK's great forkpost.
> Date: Friday, February 13, 1998 5:07 PM
>
> I love this!!
>
> > > And I think the following oversimplifies the difference between
CORBA
> > > and DCOM:
> > >
> > > > InfoWorld: So from your point of view DCOM and CORBA are transport
> > > > mechanisms?
> > > >
> > > > Gosling: I don't care. It's how the bits get across. The CORBA
stuff
> > > > has been around for a long time. Microsoft, for whatever reason,
> > > > decided to build their own thing that was exactly the same, just
built
> > > > differently.
> >
> > Sounds like Ron!
> >
> >
> > Of course, I _WOULDN'T_ say Microsoft's stuff is exactly the same,
> > just built differently than CORBA.
> >
> > That's like saying the uber-space-toilet on the Space Shuttle is
> > exactly the same as a chemical toilet in an AirStream(TM) - they're
> > exactly the same, just built differently.
> >
etc., JoeK's toilet analogy....
Actually, no, Ron wouldn't have said anything at all like what
JG said just there above. For one thing, Ron remains ignorant
enough of DCOM not to comment about it very much in public.
More importantly, Ron is quite affronted by notions that
CORBA (or DCOM) are "just transport mechanisms". Like, huh??
I would NEVER say that. I'm quite surprised Gosling did.
The reason the RMI/CORBA debate got as vicious as it did - and
still is - is that this was hardly just about transports. It was about
what ought to be the de facto distributed development model.
And the CORBA community was furious that Sun would
break ranks.
IIOP is a transport mechanism. DCOM's
internal usage of RPCs is as well. But CORBA, and COM, present
a development abstraction - an object model, if you like. You can
bicker with how good these abstractions are, how useable or
efficient or well designed they are. But there's really no point to
using CORBA as "just a transport" - why not just use sockets??
The only reason you'd go through the expense and bother of
an ORB is to model your interfaces and "build" a CORBA (or
COM) distributed system. Meaning taking it into account, a priori,
explicitly. That's not what I would call "just a transport".
Ron
PS
All right, all right. So put me back in Rohit. I'm getting
forwarded FoRKposts that people figure I just can't live without, and now
I'm posting there as well. Mark figures that makes me a FoRKer,
like it or not. I'll try to behave, ok :-)?
PPS So, like, to change the subject: What do FoRKers think?
Am I going to have a home in Israel to go back to in 6 weeks,
or is that bugger Saddam going to hit again? Should
have taken him out 7 years ago...