Re: where is corba?

[sopwith redhat com (Elliot Lee)]

On 14 Aug 1999 23:10:18 -0400, Warren Young <tangent@cyberport.com> wrote:

>A shared library would _work_ for this one case, but I wouldn't say it'd
>be better.  There are two problems with shared libraries for this sort
>of thing.  You either have to:
>
>1. Link to a specific library by name when building the program.  This
>ties your program to a particular implementation.

There wouldn't be any reason to switch implementations. libwww provides
both a modular framework for registering and using protocol handlers, and
implementations for commonly used protocols (http, ftp, news, file, etc.).

>A CORBA component would fix both of these problems, because you can just
>look up an implementation of a given interface by name.  "Give me a file
>transfer component", your program says, and the ORB figures out how to
>satisfy that request.  Maybe the back end will be implemented by gftp,
>maybe by Midnight Commander, and maybe it'll be a custom dedicated
>component.  Your program doesn't know or care, so long as it satisfies
>the required interface.

You can do this with libwww. libwww IS the interface to use to all the
various protocol handlers such as gftp/mc/etc. If CORBA is ever actually
needed for a protocol implementation, it's perfectly possible to use, but
libwww already exists and does the job well, so there's no reason to waste
effort on duplicating what it does in a more resource-intensive manner.

-- Elliot
Who me? I just wander from room to room.