RE: [Evolution-hackers] No CORBA interfaces with 1.5?

["Patrick Gerzanics" <patrickg xcnetwork com>]

It looks like the CORBA interfaces that used to be evolution-calendar.idl
and addressbook.idl have survived the transition as
Evolution-DataServer-Addressbook.idl and Evolution-DataServer-Calendar.idl,
but the Storage level interfaces, that were in Evolution-Storage.idl and
such, don't seem to have alternative implementations.

Our product, XC Connect
(http://www.xcnetwork.com/exchange_alternative_linux.jsp), is a Java-based
collaboration server similar to MS Exchange.  It supports contacts, events
and tasks.  We have written connectors for Microsoft Outlook, the 1.4.x
versions of Evolution and are nearly finished with a connector for Microsoft
Entourage for OS X.  The paradigm for all of our connectors is that they are
separate programs that interact with their applications via external
interfaces and require no changes to the applications with which they
provide synchronization capabilities.  We were able to achieve this for the
Evolution connector with a combination of Java and the CORBA interfaces.

Since the data store for our connectors is the applications themselves, it
is necessary with all of our connectors to be able to create/modify/delete
folders programatically via an out-of-process interface, in order to provide
shared folder information.  This way, if a user is given permission to view
a folder, we programatically create the shared folder and populate it with
data from the server automatically.  We did this before using the Storage
interface, but there does not seem to be an alternative method with the 1.5
release.

We are not concerned that the interfaces and associated methods are changing
or being renamed.  We can handle that in the connector code itself.
However, if the same functionality is no longer available via CORBA, that is
of substantial concern as it may force our existing Evolution customers to
stay with the 1.4.5 release of Evolution.

As a company we are just trying to determine what support for Evolution we
can expect to be able to give our customers going forward since it looks
like 1.5 is nearing a full-scale release.

Thanks.

-Patrick


-----Original Message-----
From: JP Rosevear [mailto:jpr ximian com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 5:58 PM
To: Patrick Gerzanics
Cc: evolution-hackers ximian com
Subject: Re: [Evolution-hackers] No CORBA interfaces with 1.5?


On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 12:36, Patrick Gerzanics wrote:
> I was very surprised to find out that the CORBA interfaces that we utilize
> in 1.4.x versions of Evolution for synchronization have been removed in
the
> 1.5 codebase.  Is there a different out-of-process way of interacting with
> Evolution that we can utilize instead, native or otherwise?  The 1.4
> interfaces were rather clunky, but they did work...
>
> Is CORBA support going to come back with 2.0 and the EDS?  From a brief
look
> at the source code for the EDS, we see CORBA interfaces for interacting
with
> calendar and contact lists directly, but none of the higher level code to
> interact with the folder list, etc.
>
> We would hate to have to drop Evolution support for our synchronization
> server with the upcoming release of 1.5 and are trying to find a different
> approach for interacting with Evo.

They have not been dropped at all, they reside in Evolution Data Server
(the evolution-data-server module in gnome CVS).  The old "wombat" has
been split out and renamed.  Note that going forward we hope to provide
binary compatibility for the e-d-s libraries (in another couple of major
releases) but its unlikely we will ever guarantee the corba interfaces
from changing.

What product is it you write?

-JP
--
JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>
Ximian, Inc.