Re: XML and GNOME community

[Erik Andersen <andersen inconnect com>]

On Thu, 4 Jun 1998, Elliot Lee wrote:

> > 
> > 	Well, drag-and-drop and communication with the panel could be
> > implemented by sending chunks of XML back and forth, instead of using
> > CORBA.
> 
> I don't think that is a good idea.
> 
> See, the problem is HOW you are going to send those chunks of data from
> a dragging application to the panel. Sure you can send it AS XML, but the
> XML has to get there somehow.
> 
> CORBA does not dictate what, it takes care of how.
> 
> In addition, if you can decide upon a standard binary format, which CORBA
> allows you to do by transferring data structures directly, you avoid all
> the parsing overhead.
> 
[--------snip---------------]

Ok, how about this.  Lets suppose that I have Gnome and so does a machine
locate at the South pole (surrounded by penguins of course).  Lets further 
suppose there is a firewall between me and the remote machine.  Once more, 
let us further suppose that somebody has written a very cool Gnome 
application.  I want to use this app locally to manipulate data
on the remote server (say the app is a cool sys-admin tool which is now
being used as a remote sys-admin tool by the graces of CORBA).

If there were no firewall in the way, I could easily run my sys-admin tool
and take care of what needs to be done.  Unfortunatly, the firewall (as would
be expected of most firewalls) is going to block the Internet Inter-ORB
Protocol (IIOP).  Bummer.  I'm out of luck (yeah, I could telnet in, but that 
would be much less cool).

Now, let us suppose that instead of using CORBA components to define the data
structures, GNOME instead used XML.  Now I can drive CORBA software components
(such as the hypothetical sys-admin tool) on the remote machine via HTTP,
which all but the most draconian firewalls let through.

Just my $0.02,
 
 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   Web:    http://www.inconnect.com/~andersen/ 
                   email:  andersee@debian.org
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