Re: OAF and XServiceInfo

[Michael Hoennig "(mi)" <mi sun com>]

Hi Majiej,

> I don't know what XServiceInfo does, but perhaps it's similar to the
> introspection about activated objects that I'd like to see in OAF in
> the future.

I don't think so. But I suggest to take a look at the interfaces. 
OpenOffice introspection is much more that just this simple "service 
listing" XServiceInfo. It is a complete runtime type inspection. See 
com::sun::star::reflection for core reflection and com::sun::star::script 
for introspection. 

Core reflection, btw, is analyzing the interfaces of objects down to 
methods and their argument types and return types. Introspection 
interprets that stuff and gathers additional data from method calls (i.e. 
to find out runtime properties), it is mostly for scripting engines.

> * But boy, it would be nice to be able to do queries about running
>   activated objects even if they were not activated by a standard OAF
>   method. That seems rather compelling to me. It makes for a powerful
>   system-wide introspection facility, not merely a per-object one.

That's why I would suggest, not to put it into the OAF. Probably there is 
code to share, but I would suggest to have a separate component which 
does core reflection and introspection on objects. That is actually the 
way OpenOffice is doing it. And if BONOBO does not have anything here, we 
should not kick it out, before knowing WHY.

> If service specs were entirely separate from OAF, all the info in the
> service spec would have to be duplicated in the oafinfo file. 

I would mostly say, C code is duplicated in o files as well - somehow ;-) 


	Michael