Re: An ORB for GNOME?

[Jim Pick <jim jimpick com>]

> > > Have you tried TAO?  It comes with the ACE class library, but is a
> > > complete ORB that is being actively developed.  The ACE class library
> > > itself is REALLY nice, and has a lot of industry support.  Plus it's
> > > great for networked apps.
> > 
> > TAO is sadly C++ based as well.  We want an ORB that supports C
> > bindings as well.  

The nice thing about CORBA is that we can use multiple ORBs, and they
all will talk to each other.  So a C++ program can use an ORB with C++
bindings, and a Guile program can use an ORB with Guile bindings, and
they can talk to each other.

In the long run, it is desirable to have a single ORB, just to reduce
the memory requirements.  When we get ORBs that can talk to
everything, we can reduce the number of ORBs we use.

At that point, we can have an "ORB war", and we'll choose the ORB
which works best for everything.

Unlike an "editor war", and "ORB war" will probably have a clear
winner based on performance, because they all do the same thing (as
defined by the OMG specs).

TAO is probably fast, but so is OmniORB.  ILU has licensing problems.
Arachne and Electra are also options.  Mico is being used because it
is more full featured at this point.  That may change in the future.
Plus there's ORBit under development, and Tom Tromey even sent me a
DII implementation in elisp.

It's probably counterproductive to try to settle on an ORB until the
dust settles.  They're all worth looking at if you've got the time
though.

Cheers,

 - Jim

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